883 


. 


z 

665 


Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 

Los  Angeles 


Form  L  1 


665 

L5£ 


This  book 

6     lr~ 


SOUTHERN  BRANCH, 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 

LIBRARY, 

UOS  ANGELES,  CALIF. 


LIBRARY  IDEALS 


LIBRARY  IDEALS 


BY 


HENRY  E.  LEGLER 


Compiled  and  Edited  by  His  Son, 
HENRY  M.  LEGLER. 


46191 

CHICAGO    :    :   LONDON 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

1918 


COPYRIGHT    BY 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
1918 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


CONTENTS 

<K 

Preface    VII 

The  Problem  of  the  Cities  1 

Certain  Phases  of  Library  Extension  10 

j 

Next  Steps  21 

The  World  of  Print  and  the  World's  Work 36 

Library  Work  With  Children  57 

Traveling  Libraries   64 

Administration  of  Library  Funds   '.  73 


PREFACE 

[ISCONSIN,  a  true  cradle  of  freedom  and 
successful  government,  has  fostered  several 
librarians  who  were  true  humanists.     Dr. 
Peckham  was  one.     Dr.  Thwaites  was  an- 
other.    Henry  E.  Legler  was  unlike  either 
of  these,  but  greater  than  either  in  his  continued  and 
unabated  activity  for  the  good  of  the  people. 

Once,  on  being  complimented  for  his  splendid 
work  in  natural  history  and  his  persistence  in  the  pur- 
suit of  scientific  facts,  Dr.  Peckham  remarked:  "Oh, 
yes,  but  the  facts  have  no  value  in  themselves.  They 
merely  build  up  the  groundwork  of  the  ideas,  and 
help  you  climb  to  the  point  of  view  where  the  deeper 
aspects  of  the  subject  spread  out  before  you  like  a 
landscape  beneath  a  mountain-top." 

Mr.  Legler's  activity  in  behalf  of  libraries  will 
support  the  same  explanation.  He  seemed  always 
immersed  in  detail,  always  planning  some  movement 
and  carrying  it  into  effect  by  his  peculiar,  dynamic 
persistence.  But  he  who  observed  the  man  kindly  and 
closely  cannot  have  failed  to  have  noticed  that  there 
was  a  distinct  Beyond  illumining  and  overshadowing 
it  all.  There  was  a  dream  to  come  true,  a  vision  to 
be  unfolded.  The  dream  and  vision  were  in  the  man's 
speech  and  eye.  He  lived  under  a  prophecy. 

It  is  not  for  us  to  estimate  whether  this  prophecy 
became  fulfilled  in  his  life  as  one  of  us.  But  it  is 
our  privilege  to  confess  that  it  brought  to  us  the 


VIII  PREFACE 

things  which  Europeans  have  designated  as  "culture" 
and  which  really  is  enlightenment.  Thus  it  is  that 
many  of  Mr.  Legler's  associates  and  friends  will 
recollect  with  gratitude  that  some  gave  them  knowl- 
edge, and  others  gave  them  opportunities,  but  it  was 
for  Mr.  Legler  to  illumine  their  knowledge  and  oppor- 
tunity with  the  live  spark  of  inspiration. 

The  dream  was  in  his  eye,  inspiration  was  in  his 
speech  and  manner.  Library  work  was  the  means 
in  his  power  of  making  his  fellow-men  ever  more 
free  and  happy,  ever  more  master  of  themselves,  ever 
more  capable  of  being  guided,  not  by  fear  and  never 
by  prejudice,  but  by  a  live  responsibility  to  the  spirit 
within  them.  Personally,  though  a  most  assiduous 
worker  at  his  official  desk  in  Milwaukee,  Madison 
or  Chicago,  he  always  thought  of  escaping  and  of 
seeking  some  quiet  spot  in  the  wilderness — where, 
doubtless,  he  hoped  to  view  his  work  from  above. 
How  many  librarians  nowadays  have  such  a  hope? 

Of  his  method  with  the  men  and  women  of  his 
age  many  of  us  will  retain  unforgettable  memories. 
He  was  prompt,  precise,  perhaps  even  brief,  but  in- 
variably gracious.  His  Italian  ancestry  told  in  the 
inimitable  grace  he  unfolded  to  kindred  spirits  in 
confidence.  We  never  were  in  doubt  of  the  things 
he  admired  and  fostered.  We  never  felt  there  were 
hidden  recesses  of  doubt  and  perplexity  behind  his 
sympathies.  His  grace  of  manner  never  was  marred 
by  contact  with  less  enlightened  surroundings.  It  is 
inimitable  and  unforgettable  how  he  would  pause  in 
the  midst  of  some  matter  of  the  moment,  to  plunge 
into  some  subject  which  he  knew  would  interest  and 
benefit  the  other  person.  And  how  grateful  he  was 
to  strike  a  vein  of  gold  in  a  seemingly  unpromising 
human  ore  I 


PREFACE  IX 

Secretary  of  the  Milwaukee  Board  of  Education, 
and  Secretary  of  the  Wisconsin  Free  Library  Com- 
mission, Mr.  Legler  was  already  well  versed  in  official 
service  when  chosen  Librarian  of  the  Chicago  Public 
Library.  He  had  declined  several  offers  of  important 
posts  before  that  time,  because  the  work  he  would  give 
called  for  perfect  freedom  to  work  out  the  problems 
as  he  saw  them.  Wisconsin  had  given  him  this  free- 
dom. Chicago  promised  it — and  kept  her  promise. 
There  was  sufficient  prestige  within  the  Chicago 
Public  Library  to  warrant  respect  for,  and  liberal 
support  of,  its  work,  but  the  public  estimate  of  this 
prestige  was  lacking.  Other  large  cities  possess  this 
estimate  in  varying  degree.  Chicago — not  its  library 
— had  fallen  behind. 

The  effect  of  Mr.  Legler's  presence  in  Chicago 
has  been  most  fortunate  for  all  concerned.  He  took 
his  place  in  public  affairs  naturally  and  effectively. 
The  library's  prestige  grew  in  public  recognition  as 
the  work  of  himself  and  his  associates  progressed.  He 
gave  all — and  they  accepted  all,  naturally  and  easily. 
But  the  giving  and  taking  required  all  his  bodily 
strength.  He  knew  that  an  easier  life  was  possible, 
but  his  humanity  could  not  accept  the  easier  form,  and 
so  the  strength  gave  out. 

But  the  spirit  remains.  Mr.  Legler  gave  valuable 
contributions  to  historical  investigation  and  to  literary 
criticism,  and  he  has  published  notable  contributions  to 
the  elucidation  of  American  forms  of  life.  His  contri- 
butions to  library  science  and  the  art  of  books  have 
been  in  part  collected  in  the  volume  herewith  presented. 
The  main  purpose  in  collecting  them  in  the  present 
form  is  to  convey  their  purposes  to  the  friends  who 
like  to  remember  the  mind  out  of  which  they  grew — 
and  to  perpetuate  to  others  a  memory  of  that  burning 


X  PREFACE 

zeal,  that  aspiring  enthusiasm,  that  radical  idealism, 
which  animated  Mr.  Legler  in  choosing  the  library  as 
the  place  where  true  humanism  may  be  fostered  and 
American  enlightenment  may  flourish. 

"Whatever  began  in  the  course  of  time — if  of  the 
Spirit  of  Truth  and  Love,  it  will  be  in  time  completed." 

J.  CHRISTIAN  BAY. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  CITIES 

NCLE  SAM'S  last  tabulation  of  his  people 
holds  within  its  maze  of  figures  a  basis  for 
prophecy,  as  well  as  a  summary  of  the  pres- 
ent, and  a  comparison  with  the  past.  For 
those  who  are  concerned  with  the  making 
of  an  intelligent  citizenship,  perhaps  the  striking  and 
significant  fact  is  not  the  marvelous  industrial  develop- 
ment of  the  country,  but  rather  the  amazing  growth 
of  the  cities.  It  needs  no  searching  analysis  to  give 
emphasis  to  the  sinister  elements  which  are  embodied 
in  this  bare  statement.  It  means  an  approach  to  that 
critical  period  in  the  history  of  popular  government 
when  wise  leadership  and  extension  of  education  alone 
can  serve  to  avert  threatened  disruption.  Upon  the 
people  who  are  near  to  the  soil  will  devolve  the  task 
of  holding  in  balance  the  restless  and  turbulent  ele- 
ments which  now  make  up  so  large  a  proportion  of 
the  dwellers  in  cities. 

The  modern  growth  of  the  city,  with  all  that  this 
movement  in  population  implies,  must  be  reckoned 
with  everywhere.  Greater  New  York  has  a  popula- 
tion exceeding  that  of  any  state  in  the  Union  except 
its  own.  Chicago  has  within  its  city  limits  more  peo- 
ple than  any  of  forty  states.  The  ten  leading  cities 
comprise  together  one-eighth  of  the  total  population 
of  the  United  States.  If  New  York  City  and  Chicago 
and  their  conditions  are  extreme  manifestations,  it 
must  be  taken  into  account  that  in  perhaps  not  to 


2  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

exceed  a  quarter  and  at  most  a  half  century,  this 
growth  cityward  will  be  duplicated  in  every  section  of 
the  United  States.  There  are  now  58  cities  in  the 
United  States  each  counting  more  than  100,000  popu- 
lation, eight  of  them  in  excess  of  half  a  million  each; 
there  are  180  cities  more  each  counting  from  25,000 
to  100,000  inhabitants. 

It  is  hard  to  realize  the  rate  of  urban  growth.  In 
spite  of  the  opening  of  vast  tracts  of  land  to  be  had 
almost  for  the  asking,  the  total  town  population  has 
multiplied  in  the  last  hundred  years  from  3  to  approxi- 
mately 50  per  cent. 

For  the  third  or  fourth  time,  the  city  is  becoming 
the  dominant  factor  in  the  world's  history.  The  city- 
states  of  Greece  rose  and  fell.  Some  of  them  became 
spoils  of  conquerors,  others  wasted  from  internal 
causes.  Corinth  once  exercised  sovereignty  of  the  seas, 
but  half  a  million  of  her  population  were  slaves. 
When  destroyed  by  the  Carthaginians,  Agrigentum 
was  said  to  number  two  millions  of  people. 

Genoa,  Venice,  the  cities  of  the  Hanseatic  league, 
played  their  brief  part  in  the  commercial  supremacy 
of  their  day.  Rome  once  possessed  a  population  of 
one  million  and  a  quarter,  but  though  circled  by  beau- 
tiful villas  and  gardens,  the  common  people  lived  con- 
gested in  buildings  whose  floors  and  apartments  were 
divided  among  numerous  families.  Famous  writers 
have  told  us  of  the  splendor  and  size  of  hundred-gated 
Thebes  and  Babylon  and  Antioch  and  Ephesus.  But 
if  there  was  splendor,  there  was  vice;  there  was  mag- 
nificence, but  there  dwelt  squalor  as  well.  Beauty 
and  opulence  fattening  on  human  misery  could  not 
withstand  famine,  pestilence,  and  vice.  The  glories  of 
the  cities  on  the  Nile,  the  Euphrates,  and  the  Tiber  are 
but  a  memory.  And  unless  in  the  civic  life  of  the 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  CITIES  3 

modern  city  there  is  introduced  an  element  that  shall 
embrace  the  common  good,  perhaps  Macaulay's  oft- 
cited  description  of  the  New  Zealander  standing  on 
the  wreck  of  London  bridge  surveying  the  ruins  of  St. 
Paul's  may  yet  become  historic  instead  of  merely  pro- 
phetic. 

It  is  perhaps  but  one  of  many  evidences  of  the  rest- 
lessness of  the  day  that  the  lure  of  the  city  beckons 
with  attraction  inescapable  to  the  youth  of  the  country- 
side. Young  men  and  young  women  who  yield  to  the 
fascination  find  too  late  that  they  have  sought  Dead 
Sea  Fruit, 

"Which  charms  the  eye 
But  turns  to  ashes  on  the  lips." 

The  refuges  and  jails  and  lazarets  and  foul  places 
of  the  great  cities  are  filled  with  the  derelicts  of 
humanity  who  in  less  hectic  atmosphere  might  have 
led  lives  of  usefulness  and  contentment.  Much  has 
been  done  to  give  the  life  in  the  rural  regions  attract- 
iveness and  comfort;  much  more  remains  to  be  done, 
and  particularly  in  supplying  educational  advantages, 
if  the  young  men  and  women  are  to  be  made  to  feel 
that  their  opportunities  are  no  less  than  those  to  be 
secured  in  larger  cities  of  pulsing  life.  How  wretch- 
edly as  yet  this  want  has  been  met  in  most  states,  those 
charged  with  the  supervision  of  educational  activities 
can  testify. 

There  are  those  who  in  the  face  of  present-day 
economic  conditions  contend  that  any  attempt  to  stop 
the  great  trek  cityward  must  prove  as  futile  as  the 
back-to-the-soil  movement  has  on  the  whole  proved  to 
be.  Any  such  admission  bodes  but  ill  for  the  future 
of  this  land.  It  means  that  the  number  of  men  who 
feel  an  ownership  in  the  land,  in  houses,  in  the  govern- 


4  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

ment  must  decrease.    And  therein  lies  a  danger  not  to 
be  lightly  disregarded. 

Something  of  the  dream  and  Sehnsucht  that  comes 
to  the  dreaming  country  boy,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
has  pictured  with  his  wonder  touch  in  his  idyl  of  the 
miller's  boy.  Something,  too,  he  has  suggested  in  his 
ending  of  the  story: 

WILL  O'  THE  MILL 

"The  mill  where  Will  lived  with  his  adopted  parents  stood  in  a 
falling  valley  between  pine  woods  and  great  mountains.  Above,  hill 
after  hill  soared  upwards  until  they  soared  out  of  the  depths  of  the 
hardiest  timber,  and  stood  naked  against  the  sky.  Below,  the  valley 
grew  ever  steeper  and  steeper,  and  at  the  same  time  widened  out  on 
either  hand :  and  from  an  eminence  beside  the  mill  it  was  possible  to 
see  its  whole  length  and  away  beyond  it  over  a  wide  plain,  where  the 
river  turned  and  shone,  and  moved  on  from  city  to  city  on  its  voyage 
towards  the  sea.  All  through  the  summer,  traveling  carnages  came 
crawling  up,  or  went  plunging  briskly  downwards  past  the  mill ;  and 
as  it  happened  that  the  other  side  was  very  much  easier  of  ascent, 
the  path  was  not  much  frequented,  except  by  people  going  in  one 
direction ;  five-sixths  were  plunging  briskly  downwards  and  only  one- 
sixth  crawling  up. 

"Whither  went  all  the  tourists  and  pedlars  with  strange  wares? 
Whither  all  the  brisk  barouches  with  servants  in  the  dicky  ?  Whither 
the  water  of  the  stream,  ever  coursing  downward  and  ever  renewed 
from  above?  Even  the  wind  blew  oftener  down  the  valley  and  car- 
ried the  dead  leaves  along  with  it  in  the  fall.  It  seemed  like  a  great 
conspiracy  of  things  animate  and  inanimate,  they  all  went  down- 
ward, fleetly  and  gaily  downward,  posting  downward  to  the  unknown 
world,  and  only  he,  it  seemed,  remained  behind,  like  a  stock  upon 
the  wayside. 

"From  that  day  forward  Will  was  full  of  new  hopes  and  longings. 
Something  kept  tugging  at  his  heartstrings;  the  running  water  car- 
ried his  desires  along  with  it  as  he  dreamed  over  its  fleeting  surface; 
the  wind,  as  it  ran  over  innumerable  tree-tops,  hailed  him  with  encour- 
aging words;  branches  beckoned  downward;  the  open  road,  as  it 
shouldered  round  the  angles  and  went  turning  and  vanishing  faster 
and  faster  down  the  valley,  tortured  him  with  its  solicitations.  He 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  CITIES  5 

spent  long  whiles  on  the  eminence,  looking  down  the  rivershed  and 
abroad  on  the  low  flatlands  and  watched  the  clouds  that  traveled 
forth  upon  the  sluggish  wind  and  trailed  their  purple  shadows  on  the 
plain ;  or,  he  would  linger  by  the  wayside,  and  follow  the  carriages 
with  his  eyes  as  they  rattled  downward  by  the  river.  It  did  not 
matter  what  it  was ;  everything  that  went  that  way,  were  it  cloud  or 
carriage,  bird,  or  brown  water  in  the  stream,  he  felt  his  heart  flow 
out  after  it,  in  an  ecstacy  of  longing. 

"One  day,  when  Will  was  about  sixteen,  a  young  man  arrived 
at  sunset  to  pass  the  night.  He  was  a  contented-looking  fellow,  with 
a  jolly  eye,  and  carried  a  knapsack.  While  dinner  was  preparing,  he 
sat  in  the  arbour  to  read  a  book ;  but  as  soon  as  he  had  begun  to 
observe  Will,  the  book  was  laid  aside;  he  was  plainly  one  of  those 
who  prefer  living  people  to  people  made  of  ink  and  paper.  Will,  on 
his  part,  although  he  had  not  been  much  interested  in  the  stranger  at 
first  sight,  soon  began  to  take  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  in  his  talk,  which 
was  full  of  good  nature  and  good  sense,  and  at  last  conceived  a  great 
respect  for  his  character  and  wisdom.  They  sat  far  into  the  night; 
and  Will  opened  his  heart  to  the  young  man,  and  told  him  how  he 
longed  to  leave  the  valley  and  what  bright  hopes  he  had  connected 
with  the  cities  of  the  plain.  The  young  man  whistled,  and  then  broke 
into  a  smile. 

"  'My  young  friend,'  he  remarked,  'you  are  a  very  curious  little 
fellow,  to  be  sure,  and  wish  a  great  many  things  which  you  will  never 
get.  Why,  you  would  feel  quite  ashamed  if  you  knew  how  the  little 
fellows  in  these  fairy  cities  of  yours  are  all  after  the  same  sort  of  non- 
sense, and  keep  breaking  their  hearts  to  get  up  into  the  mountains. 
And  let  me  tell  you,  those  who  go  down  into  the  plains  are  a  very 
short  while  there  before  they  wish  themselves  heartily  back  again. 
The  air  is  not  so  light  or  so  pure;  nor  is  the  sun  any  brighter.  As 
for  the  beautiful  men  and  women,  you  would  see  many  of  them  in 
rags  and  many  of  them  deformed ;  and  a  city  is  a  hard  place  for 
people  who  are  poor  and  sensitive.' 

'  'You  must  think  me  very  simple,'  answered  Will.  'Although 
I  have  never  been  out  of  this  valley,  believe  me,  I  have  used  my  eyes. 
I  do  not  expect  to  find  all  things  right  in  your  cities.  That  is  not 
what  troubles  me;  it  might  have  been  that  once  upon  a  time;  but 
although  I  live  here  always,  I  have  asked  many  questions  and  learned 
a  great  deal  in  these  last  years,  and  certainly  enough  to  cure  me  of 
my  old  fancies.  But  you  would  not  have  me  die  and  not  see  all  that 
is  to  be  seen,  and  do  all  that  a  man  can  do,  let  it  be  good  or  evil? 


6  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

You  would  not  have  me  spend  all  my  days  between  this  road  here 
and  the  river,  and  not  so  much  as  make  a  motion  to  be  up  and  live 
my  life?  I  would  rather  die  out  of  hand,'  he  cried,  'than  linger  on 
as  I  am  doing.' 

"  'Thousands  of  people,'  said  the  young  man,  'live  and  die  like 
you,  and  are  none  the  less  happy.' 

"  'Ah!'  said  Will,  'if  there  are  thousands  who  would  like,  why 
should  not  one  of  them  have  my  place?' 

"It  was  quite  dark;  there  was  a  hanging  lamp  in  the  arbour  which 
lit  up  the  table  and  the  faces  of  the  speakers;  and  along  the  arch  the 
leaves  upon  the  trellis  stood  out  illuminated  against  the  bright  sky, 
a  pattern  of  transparent  green  upon  a  dusky  purple.  The  young 
man  rose,  and,  taking  Will  by  the  arm,  led  him  out  under  the  open 
heavens. 

"  'Did  you  ever  look  at  the  stars?'  he  asked,  pointing  upwards. 

"  'Often  and  often,'  answered  Will. 

"  'And  do  you  know  what  they  are?' 

"  'I  have  fancied  many  things.' 

'  'They  are  worlds  like  ours,'  said  the  young  man.  'Some  of 
them  less;  many  of  them  a  million  times  greater;  and  some  of  the 
least  sparkles  that  you  see  are  not  only  worlds,  but  whole  clusters 
of  worlds  turning  about  each  other  in  the  midst  of  space.' 

"Will  hung  his  head  a  little,  and  then  raised  it  once  more  to 
heaven.  The  stars  seemed  to  expand  and  emit  a  sharper  brilliancy; 
and  as  he  kept  turning  his  eyes  higher  and  higher,  they  seemed  to 
increase  in  multitude  under  his  gaze.  *  *  * 

"Will  went  to  and  fro  minding  his  wayside  inn,  until  the  snow 
began  to  thicken  on  his  head.  His  heart  was  young  and  vigorous, 
and  if  his  pulses  kept  a  sober  time,  they  still  beat  strong  and  steady  in 
his  wrists.  He  stooped  a  little,  but  his  step  was  firm,  and  his  sinewy 
hands  were  reached  out  to  all  men  with  a  friendly  pressure.  His 
talk  was  full  of  wise  sayings.  He  had  a  taste  for  other  people  and 
other  people  had  a  taste  for  him.  His  views  seemed  whimsical  to  his 
neighbors,  but  his  rough  philosophy  was  often  enough  admired  by 
learned  people  out  of  town  and  colleges.  Indeed,  he  had  a  very  noble 
old  age,  and  grew  daily  better  known;  so  that  his  fame  was  heard 
of  in  the  cities  of  the  plains.  Many  and  many  an  invitation  to  be 
sure,  he  had,  but  nothing  could  tempt  him  from  his  upland  valley. 
He  would  shake  his  head  and  smile  with  a  deal,  of  meaning:  'Fifty 
years  ago  you  would  have  brought  my  heart  into  my  mouth ;  and  now 
you  do  not  even  tempt  me.'  " 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  CITIES  7 

There  is  a  legend  of  how  a  flying  party  of  wander- 
ers encountered  a  very  old  man  shod  with  iron.  The 
old  man  asked  them  whither  they  were  going;  and  they 
answered  with  one  voice:  "To  the  Eternal  City!" 
He  looked  upon  them  gravely.  "I  have  sought  it," 
he  said,  "over  the  most  part  of  the  world.  Three  such 
pairs  as  I  now  carry  on  my  feet  have  I  worn  out  upon 
my  pilgrimage,  and  now  the  fourth  is  growing  slender 
underneath  my  steps."  And  he  turned  and  went  his 
own  way  alone,  leaving  them  astonished. 

In  the  effort  to  make  rural  life  of  equal  attractive- 
ness with  city  life,  it  must  be  admitted  that  educational 
opporunities  have  lagged  behind.  Those  who,  by 
compulsion  or  otherwise,  have  left  school  in  early 
years,  find  in  the  cities  today  abundant  opportunity 
for  self-help  in  the  public  libraries,  in  night  schools, 
and  in  other  agencies;  the  same  opportunities  are  not 
provided  to  any  appreciable  extent  in  the  country 
regions. 

In  the  present  stage  of  educational  development, 
there  are  today  millions  of  young  men  and  women  who 
find  in  the  public  library  the  only  open  door  through 
which  they  catch  glimpses  of  opportunity  beyond  their 
own  immediate  domain.  With  all  the  limitations 
involved,  this  is  a  hopeful  circumstance,  for  instances 
are  plentiful  where  "the  chance  encounter  with  a  book 
has  marked  the  awakening  of  a  life."  One  need  not 
go  to  works  of  fiction  to  seek  such  stories,  but  in  them 
may  be  found  types  which  have  been  plucked  from 
bits  of  real  life.  And  in  real  life  they  could  be  multi- 
plied a  thousand  times.  Perhaps  you  recall  the  house- 
hold of  the  Tullivers'  when  misfortune  came  upon  it, 
and  the  change  which  a  few  well-thumbed  volumes 
made  in  one  of  its  members: 


8  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

"The  new  life  was  terrible  to  Maggie — Maggie  with  her  strange 
dreams,  with  her  hunger  far  love.  Her  father  no  longer  stroked  her 
hair  as  he  used  to  do  when  she  sat  down  in  her  low  stool  beside  him 
at  night,  though  he  was  more  dependent  on  her  than  ever.  Tom, 
weary  and  full  of  his  new  business  ambitions,  did  not  respond  to  her 
caresses.  The  poor  mother  remained  hopelessly  bewildered  under  the 
blow  that  had  fallen  on  her  placid  existence. 

"The  girl  fell  back  on  the  meagre  remnant  of  books  that  had  been 
left  by  the  creditors.  She  studied  Virgil  and  Euclid  and  spent  her 
days  in  the  fields  with  the  Latin  dictionary  and  Tom's  thumbed 
schoolbooks.  One  day  she  chanced  on  a  worn  copy  of  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  and  she  pushed  her  heavy  hair  back  from  her  sad  brow  as  if 
to  see  a  sudden  vision  more  clearly.  That  chronicle  of  a  solitary, 
hidden  anguish,  struggle,  faith  and  triumph  came  to  her  in  her  need 
and  filled  her  heart  with  the  writer's  fervor  of  renunciation. 

"Her  new  inward  life  shone  out  in  her  face  with  a  tender,  soft 
light  that  mingled  itself  as  added  loveliness  with  the  enriched  color 
and  outline  of  her  blossoming  youth.  Maggie  was  beginning  to  show 
a  queenly  head  above  her  old  frocks,  and  her  mother  felt  the  change 
with  a  puzzled,  dim  wonder  that  the  once  'contrary'  and  ugly  child 
should  be  'growing  up  so  good.'  " 

The  higher  life  of  the  citizen  has  received  too  little 
attention,  and  the  lower  and  baser  life  seems  to  have 
absorbed  all  the  sympathy  and  care  of  the  authorities. 
But  we  have  touched  the  fringe  of  better  days,  and  soon 
no  municipality  or  local  governing  body  will  be  con- 
sidered complete  unless  it  has  under  its  administration 
a  library  and  a  museum,  as  well  as  a  workhouse,  a 
prison,  and  the  preserves  of  law  and  order.  It  is  for 
the  provision  for  this  higher  national  life  that  this 
plea  is  made,  and  upon  municipalities  is  earnestly 
urged  the  need  of  giving  the  fullest  and  best  attention 
to  this  question.  The  fact  should  be  emphasized  that 
the  municipality  can  do  for  the  people  in  the  way  of 
libraries  and  museums  what  cannot  possibly  be  done 
by  private  enterprise.  It  may  be  unhesitatingly  as- 
serted that  in  fullest  usefulness,  economical  manage- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  CITIES  9 

ment,  and  best  value  for  money  invested,  the  existing 
rate-supported  libraries  are  far  in  advance  of  the  pri- 
vate institutions  of  this  nature. 

It  is  some  forty  years  since  Carlyle  asked  the  ques- 
tion, "Why  is  there  not  a  Majesty's  library  in  every 
county  town?  There  is  a  Majesty's  gaol  and  gallows 
in  every  one,"  and  it  is  as  long  since  the  Public 
Libraries  Act  was  passed,  and  yet  the  lack  of  libraries 
is  still  one  of  the  most  startling  deficiencies  in  these 
islands.  We  have  given  the  people  ever  greater  and 
greater  political  power,  but  they  displayed  no  marked 
inclination  to  benefit  themselves  by  means  of  books 
or  other  means  of  culture. 

"We  must  now  educate  our  masters,"  said  Mr.  Lowe 
wThen  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867  was  passed.  He  was 
quite  right,  for  the  said  masters  were  by  no  means 
quick  to  educate  themselves,  and  the  number  of  public 
libraries  which  they  consented  to  establish  for  three 
years  after  1867  was  about  ten. 

Then  came  Mr.  Forster's  Education  Act,  and  great 
things  were  expected  of  it.  Now  that  everybody  was 
to  be  taught  his  letters,  everybody  would  surely  want 
books  to  read  also.  What,  indeed,  would  be  the  good 
of  teaching  people  to  read  at  all  unless  they  were  also 
to  have  a  supply  of  good  books?  You  might  as  well 
teach  a  man  the  use  of  his  knife  and  fork  and  then  not 
give  him  any  meat. 

Public  libraries  are  the  natural  and  legitimate  out- 
come of  compulsory  education. 


CERTAIN  PHASES  OF  LIBRARY 
EXTENSION1 


REAMING  of  Utopia,  an  English  writer 
of  romance  evolved  a  plan  for  a  people's 
palace,  centering  under  one  roof  the  pleas- 
ures and  the  interests  and  the  hopes  of  de- 
mocracy. Far  away,  if  not  improbable,  as 
seemed  the  fruition  of  his  dream,  he  lived  to  see  proph- 
ecy merge  in  realization.  Were  this  lover  of  mankind 
still  living,  he  would  know  that  his  concept,  though 
he  saw  it  carried  into  being,  had  not  permanence  in 
the  form  he  gave  it.  Ideals  cannot  be  bounded  by  the 
narrow  confines  of  four  walls.  And  yet  he  had  the 
vision  of  the  seer,  for  that  which  he  pictured  in  local 
form  with  definite  limitations  has,  in  a  direction  little 
dreamed  of  then,  assumed  form  and  substance  in  a 
great  world  movement.  Not  only  in  great  hives  of 
industry,  where  thousands  congregate  in  daily  toil,  but 
in  the  small  industrial  hamlets  and  in  the  rural  towns 
that  dot  the  land  lie  the  possibilities  for  many  such 
palaces  of  the  people,  and  in  many — very  many — of 
such  communities  today  exist  the  beginnings  that  will 
combine  and  cement  their  many-sided  interests. 

This  great  world  movement  which  is  gathering 
accelerated  momentum  with  its  own  marvelous  growth, 
we  call  library  extension.  That  term  is  perhaps  suffi- 
ciently descriptive,  though  it  gives  name  rather  to  the 

Address  delivered  on  behalf  League  of  Library  Commissions,  Asheville 
Conference  A.  L.  A.,  May  27,  1907. 


PHASES  OF  LIBRARY  EXTENSION  11 

means  used  than  to  the  results  sought  to  be  achieved. 
For  certainly  its  underlying  principle  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  democracy.  There  is  no  other  governmental 
enterprise — not  excepting  the  public  schools — that  so 
epitomizes  the  spirit  of  democracy.  For  democracy 
in  its  highest  manifestation  is  not  that  equality  that 
puts  mediocrity  and  idleness  on  the  same  level  with 
talent  and  genius  and  thrift,  but  that  equality  which 
gives  all  members  of  society  an  equal  opportunity  in 
life — that  yields  to  no  individual  as  a  birthright 
chances  denied  to  his  fellow.  And  surely  if  there  is 
any  institution  that  represents  this  fundamental  prin- 
ciple and  carries  out  a  policy  in  consonance,  it  is  the 
public  library.  Neither  condition  nor  place  of  birth, 
nor  age,  nor  sex,  nor  social  position,  serves  as  bar  of 
exclusion  from  this  house  of  the  open  door,  of  the 
cordial  welcome,  of  the  sympathetic  aid  freely  ren- 
dered. In  myriad  ways  not  dreamed  of  at  its  incep- 
tion, library  extension  has  sought  channels  of  useful- 
ness to  reach  all  the  people.  The  traveling  library  in 
rural  regions,  the  branch  stations  in  congested  centers 
of  Copulation,  the  children's  room,  the  department  of 
technology,  are  a  few  of  these — to  mention  the  ones 
which  occur  most  readily  to  mind. 

But  these  allied  agencies  do  but  touch  the  edge  of 
opportunity.  The  immediate  concern  of  those  engaged 
in  library  extension  must  be  with  the  forces  reaching 
the  adult  population,  and  especially  the  young  men 
and  women  engaged  in  industrial  pursuits.  For  the 
mission  of  the  public  library  is  two-fold — an  aid  to 
material  progress  of  the  individual  and  a  cultural 
influence  in  the  community  through  the  individual. 
Perhaps  it  may  be  said  more  accurately  that  the  one 
mission  is  essential  to  give  scope  for  the  second.  For, 
first  of  all,  man  must  needs  minister  to  his  physical 


12  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

wants.  Before  there  can  be  intellectual  expansion 
and  cultural  development,  there  must  be  leisure,  or  at 
least  conditions  that  free  the  mind  from  anxious  care 
for  the  morrow.  So  the  social  structure  after  all  must 
rest  upon  a  bread-and-butter  foundation.  It  follows 
as  a  logical  conclusion  that  society  as  a  whole  cannot 
reach  a  high  stage  of  development  until  all  its  indi- 
vidual members  are  surrounded  with  conditions  that 
permit  the  highest  self-development.  Until  a  better 
agency  shall  be  found,  it  is  the  public  library  which 
must  serve  this  need.  And  therein  lies  the  most  potent 
reason  for  the  extension  of  its  work  into  every  field, 
whether  intimately  or  remotely  affiliated,  which  can 
bring  about  these  purposes.  Its  work  with  children  is 
largely  important  to  the  extent  that  habits  are  formed 
and  facility  acquired  in  methods  that  shall  be  utilized 
in  years  succeeding  school  life.  But  its  great  problem 
is  that  of  adult  education.  What  an  enormous  field 
still  lies  unfilled,  we  learn  with  startling  emphasis  from 
figures  compiled  by  the  government.  Despite  the  fact 
that  provision  is  made  by  state  and  municipality  to 
give  to  every  individual  absolutely  without  cost  an 
education  embracing  sixteen  years  of  life,  there  are 
retarding  circumstances  that  prevent  all  but  a  mere 
fraction  of  the  population  from  enjoying  these  advan- 
tages in  full  measure. 

To  quote  a  summary  printed  last  year,  "in  the 
United  States  16,511,024  were  receiving  elementary 
education  during  the  year  1902-03;  only  776,635  at- 
tained to  a  secondary  education,  and  only  251,819  to 
the  higher  education  of  the  colleges,  technical  schools, 
etc.  Stated  in  simpler  terms,  this  means  that  in  the 
United  States  for  one  person  who  receives  a  higher 
education,  or  for  three  who  receive  the  education  of 
the  secondary  schools,  there  are  sixty-five  who  receive 


PHASES  OF  LIBRARY  EXTENSION  13 

only  an  elementary  education,  and  that  chiefly  in  the 
lowest  grades  of  the  elementary  schools." 

What  gives  further  meaning  to  this  statistical  re- 
cital is  the  force  of  modern  economic  conditions. 
From  an  agricultural  we  are  developing  into  a  manu- 
facturing people,  with  enormous  influx  from  the  rural 
into  the  urban  communities.  The  tremendous  expan- 
sion of  our  municipalities  has  brought  new  and  impor- 
tant problems.  Within  the  lifetime  of  men  today  a 
hundred  cities  have  realized  populations  in  excess  of 
that  which  New  York  City  had  when  they  were  boys. 
Vast  numbers  of  immigrants  differing  radically  in 
intelligence  and  in  education  from  earlier  comers  are 
pouring  into  the  country  annually.  It  has  been  pointed 
out  that  some  of  the  largest  Irish,  German  and  Bohe- 
mian cities  in  the  world  are  located  in  the  United 
States,  not  in  their  own  countries.  In  one  ward  in  the 
city  of  Chicago  forty  languages  are  spoken  by  persons 
who  prattled  at  their  mother's  knee  one  or  the  other 
of  them. 

"The  power  of  the  public  schools  to  assimilate  different  races  to 
our  own  institutions,  through  the  education  given  to  the  younger 
generation,  is  doubtless  one  of  the  most  remarkable  exhibitions  of 
vitality  that  the  world  has  ever  seen,"  says  Dr.  John  Dewey  in  an 
address  on  "The  School  as  a  Social  Center."  "But,  after  all,  it  leaves 
the  older  generation  still  untouched,  and  the  assimilation  of  the 
younger  can  hardly  be  complete  or  certain  as  long  as  the  homes  of  the 
parents  remain  comparatively  unaffected.  Social,  economic  and  intel- 
lectual conditions  are  changing  at  a  rate  undreamed  of  in  past  history. 
Now,  unless  the  agencies  of  instruction  are  kept  running  more  or  less 
parallel  with  these  changes,  a  considerable  body  of  men  is  bound  to 
find  itself  without  the  training  which  will  enable  it  to  adapt  itself  to 
what  is  going  on.  It  will  be  left  stranded  and  become  a  burden  for 
the  community  to  carry.  The  youth  at  eighteen  may  be  educated 
so  as  to  be  ready  for  the  conditions  which  will  meet  him  at  nineteen ; 
but  he  can  hardly  be  prepared  for  those  which  are  to  confront  him 
when  he  is  forty-five.  If  he  is  ready  for  the  latter  when  they  come,  it 


14  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

is  because  his  own  education  has  been  keeping  pace  in  the  intermediate 
years." 

And  again:  "The  daily  occupations  and  ordinary  surroundings 
of  life  are  much  more  in  need  of  interpretation  than  ever  they  have 
been  before.  Life  is  getting  so  specialized,  the  divisions  of  labor  are 
carried  so  far  that  nothing  explains  or  interprets  itself.  The  worker 
in  a  modern  factory  who  is  concerned  with  a  fractional  piece  of  a 
complex  activity,  presented  to  him  only  in  a  limited  series  of  acts  car- 
ried on  with  a  distinct  position  of  a  machine,  is  typical  of  much  in 
our  entire  social  life.  Unless  the  lives  of  a  large  part  of  our  wage 
earners  are  to  be  left  to  their  own  barren  meagerness,  the  community 
must  see  to  it  by  some  organized  agency  that  they  are  instructed  in 
the  scientific  foundation  and  social  bearings  of  the  things  they  see 
about  them,  and  of  the  activities  in  which  they  are  themselves  engag- 
ing." 

Now  if  those  who  come  in  such  limited  numbers 
from  the  colleges  and  universities,  can  keep  step  with 
the  onward  march  of  their  fellows  only  by  constantly 
adding  to  their  educational  equipment,  what  shall  be 
said  of  that  enormous  army  made  up  of  conscripts 
from  the  ranks  in  the  elementary  schools? — the  tender 
hands  that  drop  the  spelling  book  and  seize  the  work- 
man's dinner  pail? 

Thus  we  establish  the  duty  of  the  state  to  its  citizen- 
ship  in  providing  means  for  adult  education.  And 
herein  lies  a  great  opportunity  for  library  extension — 
not,  indeed,  in  seeking  to  supplant  agencies  already 
existent;  not  in  creating  new  ones  that  will  parallel 
others,  but  in  supplementing  their  work  where  such 
educational  agencies  do  exist,  in  supplying  channels 
for  their  activities  through  its  own  greater  facilities 
for  reaching  the  masses.  Important  as  are  the  public 
museum,  the  public  art  gallery,  the  popular  lecture 
or  lyceum  feature,  the  public  debate  associated  with 
or  incorporated  in  the  library,  of  as  far-reaching  im- 
portance is  another  and  newer  allied  agency  developed 
in  university  extension.  The  response  which  has  come 


PHASES  OF  LIBRARY  EXTENSION  15 

in  establishing  correspondence  study  as  part  of  modern 
university  extension  is  of  tremendous  significance.  The 
enrollment  in  correspondence  schools  of  a  million 
grown-up  men  and  women  eager  to  continue  their  edu- 
cation, and  willing  to  expend  more  than  fifty  million 
dollars  a  year  in  furtherance  of  that  desire,  is  a  factor 
that  challenges  attention.  It  is  a  new  expression  of  an 
old  impulse.  Eighty  years  ago  the  working  people 
and  artisan  classes  of  Great  Britain  took  part  in  a  simi- 
lar movement.  Its  beginning  was  prompted  by  a  wish 
for  technical  instruction.  Soon  these  mechanics'  insti- 
tutes grew  into  social  institutions,  with  collections  of 
books  as  a  secondary  interest.  The  institutes  increased 
enormously  in  number,  until  through  their  medium 
more  than  a  million  volumes  a  year  were  circulated. 
Charles  Knight  issued  his  penny  encyclopedia,  Robert 
and  William  Chambers  led  the  way  for  inexpensive 
books,  the  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  Knowledge 
came  into  existence.  Industrial  England  was  for 
the  time  being  the  workshop  of  the  world.  And  in 
the  later  university  extension  movement  which,  along 
new  lines,  is  to  make  of  universities  having  a  state 
foundation  really  the  instrument  of  the  state  for  the 
good  of  all  the  people  in  place  of  the  few,  the  libraries 
have  a  great  opportunity  to  become  an  important 
factor.  Millions  of  the  adult  population  will  thus  be 
given  an  opportunity  to  bring  out  in  its  best  form  what- 
ever of  talent  and  of  intellectual  gift  they  may  possess. 
From  a  private  letter  written  by  Professor  McCon- 
achie,  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  who  has  charge 
of  the  correspondence  study  in  the  department  of  sci- 
ence, are  taken  the  following  extracts :  "Old  ways  of 
teaching  are  breaking  down.  Library  study  and  writ- 
ten exercises  are  re-enforcing  classroom  recitations 
and  lectures.  Each  pupil  of  a  term  course  studies  one 


16  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

or  two  prescribed  texts,  reads  and  reports  in  detail  a 
minimum  of  eight  or  nine  hundred  pages  in  a  choice 
shelf  collection  of  library  books,  takes  and  submits 
notes,  writes  brief  themes  and  prepares  for  weekly 
quizzes  wherein  the  members  of  his  class  section  help- 
fully interchange  ideas  and  information.  The  post- 
office  is  the  medium  for  extension  from  the  university 
to  a  vaster  body  of  students  everywhere  throughout  the 
state.  The  same  materials — books,  periodicals,  news- 
papers, and  official  documents, — that  the  student  of  poli- 
tics uses  under  the  personal  oversight  of  the  university 
instructor,  are  scattered  in  vast  abundance  everywhere. 
The  state  is  one  great  library.  The  largest  single  col- 
lection is  paltry  beside  this  magnificent  and  ever- 
increasing  supply  of  political  literature  that  permeates 
every  hamlet.  Civic  intelligence  has  thriven  upon 
the  mere  haphazard  and  desultory  reading  of  the 
people.  Correspondence  studies  will  put  their  scat- 
tered material  into  shape  for  them  and  systematize 
their  use  thereof."^  The  library  and  the  university 
\|  may  serve  the  citizen  by  giving  unity  and  direction  to 
his  reading,  helping  him  to  hitherto  hidden  worth  and 
meaning  in  the  humblest  literary  material  at  his  hand, 
by  quickening  his  interest  alike  in  the  offices,  institu- 
tions and  activities  that  lie  nearest  to  his  daily  life  and 
in  his  world-wide  relationship  with  his  fellowmen. 
For  the  citizen  on  the  farm,  at  the  desk,  or  in  the  fac- 
tory, they  point  the  way  out  of  vague  realizations  into 
distinct  and  definite  command  of  his  political  self, 
offer  refreshing  change  from  the  narrowing  viewpoint 
of  individual  interest,  to  the  broadening  viewpoint  of 
his  town  or  state  or  country,  and  lead  on  to  far  inter- 
national vistas  of  world-wide  life  and  destiny. 

Society  has  an  interest  in  this  beyond  the  rights  of 
the  individual.     The  greatest  waste  to  society  is  not 


PHASES  OF  LIBRARY  EXTENSION  17 

that  which  comes  from  improvidence,  but  from  unde- 
veloped or  unused  opportunity.  So  it  becomes  the 
duty  of  every  community  to  make  its  contribution  to 
the  world,  whether  it  be  in  the  realm  of  invention,  sci- 
entific discovery,  or  literature.  And  how  is  this  to  be 
done  if  genius  and  talent  are  allowed  to  die  unborn  for 
lack  of  opportunity  to  grow?  Wonderful  as  has  been 
the  progress  of  the  world's  knowledge  during  the  last 
century  of  scientific  research,  who  will  venture  to 
say  that  it  constitutes  more  than  a  fraction  of 
what  might  have  been  if  all  the  genius  that  re- 
mained dormant  and  unproductive  could  have  been 
utilized?  From  what  we  know  of  isolated  instances 
where  mere  chance  has  saved  to  the  world  great  forces 
that  make  for  the  progress  of  humanity,  we  can  infer 
what  might  have  been  realized,  under  happier  con- 
ditions. Every  librarian  of  experience,  every  adminis- 
trator of  traveling  libraries,  will  recall  such  instances. 
One  boy  comes  upon  the  right  book,  and  the  current 
of  his  life  is  changed;  another  reads  a  volume,  and  in 
his  brain  germinates  the  seed  that  blossoms  into  a 
great  invention;  in  a  chance  hour  of  reading,  a  third 
finds  in  a  page,  a  phrase,  a  word,  the  inspiration  whose 
expression  sets  aflame  the  world.  A  master  pen  has 
vividly  described  the  process:2 

"Most  of  us  who  turn  to  any  subject  with  love  remember  some 
morning  or  evening  hour  when  we  got  on  a  high  stool  to  reach  down 
an  untried  volume.  *  *  *  When  hot  from  play  he  would  toss 
himself  in  a  corner,  and  in  five  minutes  be  deep  in  any  sort  of  book 
that  he  could  lay  his  hands  on;  if  it  were  Rasselas  or  Gulliver,  so 
much  the  better,  but  Bailey's  Dictionary  would  do,  or  the  Bible  with 
the  Apocrypha  in  it.  Something  he  must  read  when  he  was  not 
riding  the  pony,  or  running  and  hunting,  or  listening  to  the  talk  of 
men.  *  *  *  But,  one  vacation,  a  wet  day  sent  him  to  the  small 
home  library  to  hunt  once  more  for  a  book  which  might  have  some 

"George  Eliot,  "Middlemarch." 


18  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

freshness  for  him.  In  vain !  unless,  indeed,  he  first  took  down  a  dusty 
row  of  volumes  with  gray-paper  backs  and  dingy  labels — the  volumes 
of  an  old  encyclopedia  which  he  had  never  disturbed.  It  would  at 
least  be  a  novelty  to  disturb  them.  They  were  on  the  highest  shelf, 
and  he  stood  on  a  chair  to  get  them  down ;  but  he  opened  the  volume 
which  he  took  first  from  the  shelf ;  somehow  one  is  apt  to  read  in  a 
makeshift  attitude  just  where  it  might  seem  inconvenient  to  do  so. 
The  page  he  opened  on  was  under  the  head  of  Anatomy,  and  the  first 
passage  that  drew  his  eyes  was  on  the  valves  of  the  heart.  He  was 
not  much  acquainted  with  valves  of  any  sort,  but  he  knew  that  valvae 
were  folding  doors,  and  through  this  crevice  came  a  sudden  light 
startling  him  with  his  first  vivid  notion  of  finely-adjusted  mechanism 
in  the  human  frame.  A  liberal  education  had,  of  course,  left  him  free 
to  read  the  indecent  passages  in  the  school  classics,  but  beyond  a 
general  sense  of  secrecy  and  obscenity  in  connection  with  his  internal 
structure,  had  left  his  imagination  quite  unbiased,  so  that  for  anything 
he  knew  his  brains  lay  in  small  bags  at  his  temples,  and  he  had  ns 
more  thought  of  representing  to  himself  how  his  blood  circulated  than 
how  paper  served  instead  of  gold.  But  the  moment  of  vocation  had 
come,  and  before  he  got  down  from  his  chair  the  world  was  made  new 
to  him  by  a  presentiment  of  endless  processes  filling  the  vast  spaces 
planked  out  of  his  sight  by  that  wordy  ignorance  which  he  had  sup- 
posed to  be  knowledge.  From  that  hour  he  felt  the  growth  of  an 
intellectual  passion." 

And  in  this  wise  the  world  gained  a  great  phy- 
sician. 

All  this  may  be  said  without  disparagement  to  that 
phase  of  library  usefulness  which  may  be  termed  the 
recreative.  There  has  been  undue  and  unreasoning 
criticism  of  the  library  tendency  to  minister  to  the 
novel-reading  habit.  Many  good  people  are  inclined 
to  decry  the  public  library  because  not  all  its  patrons 
confine  their  loans  to  books  dealing  with  science, 
or  with  useful  arts.  In  their  judgment  it  is  not  the 
legitimate  function  of  the  public  library  to  meet  the 
public  demand  for  fiction.  These  same  good  people 
would  hardly  urge  that  the  freedom  of  the  public 
parks  should  be  limited  to  those  who  wish  to  make 


PHASES  OF  LIBRARY  EXTENSION  19 

botanical  studies.  The  pure  joy  in  growing  things 
and  fresh  air  and  the  song  of  uncaged  birds,  needs  no 
knowledge  of  scientific  terms  in  botany  and  ornithol- 
ogy. These  privileges  are  promotive  of  the  physical 
well-being  of  the  people;  correspondingly,  healthy 
mental  stimulus  is  to  be  found  in  "a  sparkling  and 
sprightly  story  which  may  be  read  in  an  hour  and 
which  will  leave  the  reader  with  a  good  conscience 
and  a  sense  of  cheerfulness."  Our  own  good  friend, 
Mr.  John  Cotton  Dana,  has  admirably  epitomized  the 
underlying  philosophy: 

"A  good  story  has  created  many  an  oasis  in  many  an  otherwise 
arid  life.  Many-sidedness  of  interest  makes  for  good  morals,  and 
millions  of  our  fellows  step  through  the  pages  of  a  story  book  into  a 
broader  world  than  their  nature  and  their  circumstances  ever  permit 
them  to  visit  If  anything  is  to  stay  the  narrowing  and  hardening 
process  which  specialization  of  learning,  specialization  of  inquiry  and 
of  industry  and  swift  accumulation  of  wealth  are  setting  up  among 
us.  it  is  a  return  to  romance,  poetry,  imagination,  fancy,  and  the  gen- 
eral culture  we  are  now  taught  to  despise.  Of  all  these  the  novel  is 
a  part ;  rather,  in  the  novel  are  all  of  these.  But  a  race  may  surely 
find  springing  up  in  itself  a  fresh  love  of  romance,  in  the  high  sense 
of  that  word,  which  can  keep  it  active,  hopeful,  ardent,  progressive. 
Perhaps  the  novel  is  to  be,  in  the  next  few  decades,  part  of  the  out- 
ward manifestation  of  a  new  birth  of  this  love  of  breadth  and  happi- 
ness." 

There  is,  then,  no  limitation  to  the  scope  of 
library  extension  save  that  enforced  by  meagerness 
of  resource  and  physical  ability  to  do.  In  the 
proper  affiliation  and  correlation  of  all  these  forces 
which  have  been  enumerated  and  of  others  suggested 
by  them,  will  develop  that  process  whereby  the  social 
betterment  that  today  seems  but  a  dream  will  be 
brought  into  reality.  The  form  this  combination  will 
assume  need  give  us  no  concern — whether  its  local 
physical  expression  shall  be  as  in  Boston  a  group  of 


20  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

buildings  maintained  as  separate  institutions;  or  as  in 
Pittsburgh,  a  complete,  related  scheme  of  activities 
covered  by  one  roof ;  as  planned  in  Cleveland,  a  civic 
center  with  the  public  library  giving  it  character  and 
substance;  or  as  in  New  York,  where  many  institutions, 
remotely  located  but  intimately  associated,  work  to- 
ward a  common  end.  Many  roads  may  lead  to  a 
common  center.  Which  one  the  wayfarer  chooses  is  a 
matter  of  mere  personal  preference  and  of  no  impor- 
tance, so  that  he  wends  his  way  steadily  onwards 
towards  the  object  of  his  attainment.  In  the  evolution 
of  these  uplifting  processes,  the  book  shall  stand  as 
symbol,  as  the  printed  page  shall  serve  as  instrument. 


NEXT  STEPS1 

F  ALL  human  interests  that  pertain  to  intel- 
lectual improvement — social  evolution,  sci- 
entific achievement,  educational  progress, 
governmental  advance,  or  humanitarian  en- 
deavor, none  has  seemed  too  unimportant 
for  consideration  by  library  workers.  Librarians  have 
sought  to  identify  their  work  with  them  all,  to  achieve 
contact  with  every  individual,  with  groups  of  indi- 
viduals and  with  communities  as  a  whole.  If  intel- 
ligent method  has  sometimes  seemed  lacking,  the  en- 
thusiasm and  the  self-denial  of  the  missionary  have 
been  given  in  unstinted  measure.  To  the  home  and 
to  the  mart,  to  the  school  and  to  the  playground,  to 
the  workshop  and  to  the  laboratory,  they  have  brought 
—whether  asked  or  unsought — the  best  at  their  com- 
mand. 

Not  out  of  abundance  has  the  library  attempted  so 
much  in  such  diverse  places.  Its  meager  resources 
have  been  spread  over  such  vast  fields  that  in  spots  the 
substance  has  seemed  tenuous  and  transparent.  Most 
insufficient,  and  perhaps  least  successful  thus  far,  but 
suggesting  the  most  important  function  of  library  ac- 
tivity and  presaging  its  most  significant  development, 
is  that  branch  of  service  associated  with  grammar  and 
secondary  schools.  Here  lies  the  most  fertile  field  for 

JRead  before  the  New  York  Library  Association  at  Haines  Falls,   Sept. 
•28,   1915. 


LIBRARY  IDEALS 

strong,  vigorous,  fruitful  energizing  of  such  forces  as 
the  library  possesses. 

Curiously  enough,  a  perception  of  values  which 
inhere  in  the  associated  and  co-ordinated  efforts  of 
school  and  library  has  not,  as  yet,  dawned  upon  school 
men  to  any  appreciable  degree.  Here  and  there,  in- 
deed, a  vibrant  voice  has  demanded  the  joining  of 
effort  for  practical  ends,  but  the  teaching  folk  as  a 
whole  remain  impervious  to  possibilities  even  when 
sensible  of  the  need.  Nearly  four  centuries  ago,  Mar- 
tin Luther  noted  the  possibilities  of  the  library  as  an 
educational  adjunct  and  necessity,  and  urged  the  found- 
ing of  public  libraries  for  the  preservation  and  encour- 
agement of  learning.2 

"No  cost  nor  pains,"  he  urged  in  the  concluding 
pages  of  his  letter  to  the  mayors  of  Germany,  "should 
be  spared  to  procure  good  libraries  in  suitable  build- 
ings, especially  in  the  large  cities  which  are  able  to 
afford  it." 

From  his  day  to  ours  there  appears  in  printed  works 
on  education — whether  general  or  dealing  with  special- 
ized phases — no  recurrent  note  amplifying  this  sug- 
gestion, except  a  few  casual  fugitive  references  in  less 
than  a  dozen  recent  publications,  and  two  treatises  that 
recognize  the  importance  of  the  subject  with  some  ful- 
ness of  treatment.  Perhaps  this  sweeping  characteriza- 
tion of  stolid  school-room  self-sufficiency  should  be 
modified  by  crediting  to  Horace  Mann  a  vision  that 
scarcely  survived  his  passing.  A  historian  of  educa- 
tional influences  informs  us  that  in  Mr.  Mann's  work 
for  teachers  two  aspects  are  apparent — one  dealing 
with  preparation,  the  other  with  method.  Through  his 
labors  normal  schools  became  a  component  part  of  our 
school  system,  and  institutes  were  started  for  the  spe- 

'Painter.     History  of  Education. 


NEXT  STEPS  23 

cial  training  of  teachers.  Furthermore,  he  made  ap- 
parent the  value  of  libraries  as  school  adjuncts,  and 
brought  about  their  establishment.  And  similarly  in 
backwoods  Wisconsin,  three-quarters  of  a  century  ago, 
Lyman  Draper  sought  to  interest  the  teaching  forces 
there.  His  report  printed  in  the  50's — now  rare  and 
difficult  to  procure — is  a  grouping  of  opinions,  pro- 
phetic but  yet  unrealized,  expressed  by  eminent  men 
of  the  day  as  foreshadowing  a  relationship  of  school 
and  library. 

A  careful  examination  of  fifty  average  books  on 
education  issued  since  1870  yields  but  scant  encourage- 
ment to  those  who  seek  association  of  school  and 
library.  Six  of  the  fifty  writers  give  at  least  passing 
consideration  to  the  subject.  Two  cyclopedias  of  edu- 
cation recognize  the  importance  of  the  subject.3 

Forty-two  books  issued  between  the  years  men- 
tioned, and  about  equally  divided  between  the  decades 
represented  are  wholly  barren  ot  such  mention.  On 
the  other  hand,  two  are  notable  for  vital  grasp  and 
broad  treatment — G.  Stanley  Hall's  chapters  in  the 
second  volume  of  his  "Educational  Problems,"  and 
Hugo  Miisterberg's  chapter  in  "The  Americans." 

Significant  of  present-day  conditions  is  the  testi- 
mony of  a  teacher,  who,  addressing  a  library  gather- 
ing, said:4 

"In  days  gone  by  we  carried  on  the  school  without 
libraries — we  could  do  this  as  well  as  not  because  edu- 
cation meant  learning  by  rote;  text-book  learning 
alone. 

730 

"One  devotes  thereto  a  column  and  a  half  of  1736  columns  in  the  volume, 
and  the  other  devotes  37  columns  to  the  subject  of  the  1480  columns  contained 
in  one  of  the  five  volumes  of  the  work. 

*  Library  Journal. 


24  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

"This  is,  to  my  mind,  the  most  important  thing  I 
have  to  say  to  you — we  do  not  yet  know  you  and  our 
need  for  you. 

"In  our  school  lives  as  children,  in  our  normal 
training  and  later  in  our  actual  teaching  we  have  not 
had  you,  and  we  do  not  yet  realize  your  resources. 

To  get  this  matter  before  you  definitely,  pardon  my 
using  my  own  case  as  illustration. 

"From  beginning  to  end  of  my  common  school 
education — from  the  first  grade  through  eighth — I 
never  saw  a  school  or  a  public  library.  We  had  none, 
though  I  lived  in  a  good-sized  city  in  the  Middle 
West.  I  learned  what  the  text-book  told  me;  no  sup- 
plementary reading  (or  rarely),  no  pictures,  no  ob- 
jects. My  training  in  reading  and  literature  con- 
sisted in  learning  to  keep  my  toes  on  a  crack  and  my 
voice  from  falling  on  a  question  mark! 

"In  high  school  I  had  very  little  but  the  regular 
text.  Again  memory  work  was  the  test.  I  remember 
well  a  boy  who  was  my  ideal.  He  learned  his  geog- 
raphy word  for  word  and  so  recited  it.  If  he  sneezed 
or  a  door  slammed  and  his  flow  of  words  (I  use  words 
advisedly)  was  interrupted,  he  had  to  begin  again. 
He  was  the  show  pupil  in  our  class. 

"In  college  our  instructors  in  science  performed 
all  the  experiments  for  us  while  we  looked  on.  When 
we  went  to  the  library  we  spoke  to  the  librarian 
through  a  wire  netting,  and  in  our  company  manners 
asked  for  a  book. 

"In  the  normal  school  which  I  attended  there  was 
a  so-called  children's  library,  but  the  books  were  all 
text-books,  and  we  were  not  taught  how  to  help  the 
children  to  use  them.  We  had  literature,  but  it  was 
all  about  Hamlet's  being  or  not  being  mad;  none  of  it 


NEXT  STEPS  25 

was  taught  in  a  way  to  make  it  a  tool  for  the  ele- 
mentary teacher. 

"After  all  this  I  began  teaching,  with  no  knowl- 
edge of  the  resources  of  a  library  as  an  aid  to  either 
teacher  or  child,  and  I  felt  no  need  for  such  aid. 
What  is  true  of  me  is  true  of  thousands  of  other  teach- 
ers. 

"You  must  make  us  feel  our  need  for  you.  You 
must,  if  you  please,  intrude  yourselves  upon  our  notice. 
Generations  of  teachers  who  have  worshipped  at  the 
shrine  of  the  text-book  can  in  no  other  way  be  reached. 

"The  ideals  of  education  today  are  broader,  our 
needs  are  greater,  and  you  have  the  material  to  help 
us  to  realize  our  needs." 

In  the  relatively  few  instances  where  co-operation 
between  school  and  library  administration  has  led  to 
installation  of  modern  library  equipment  in  elemen- 
tary schools,  the  difficulties  have  been  experienced 
which  are  usual  when  afterthought  supplies  what 
forethought  neglects  to  include.  Quarters  are  ordi- 
narily unsuitable  and  insufficient.  Adequate  provision 
should  be  made  when  school  buildings  are  planned, 
for  library  quarters  that  are  ample  as  to  size  and  strat- 
egic as  to  location,  instead  of  depending  for  space 
upon  a  room  or  enlarged  closet  not  otherwise  utilized, 
for  library  placement.  Perhaps  it  is  too  optimistic 
to  hope  for  a  change  soon  in  the  inconceivably  stupid 
architecture  and  design  of  school  buildings,  despite  a 
lew  recent  striking  examples  to  the  contrary. 

As  now  financed,  no  public  library  system  can 
undertake  to  administer  a  branch  library  in  every 
grade  school  building  within  its  jurisdiction.  For 
school  service  on  such  a  liberal  scale  there  would  be 
required  in  the  city  of  New  York  at  least  $4,300,000 
for  equipment  and  at  least  $537,000  annually  for  cur- 


26  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

rent  maintenance;  in  Chicago,  $2,350,000  for  initial 
equipment  and  $294,000  annually  for  maintenance;  in 
other  cities,  correspondingly  large  expenditures.  How- 
ever, in  most  of  the  major  cities  of  the  United  States, 
it  is  entirely  feasible  to  make  a  reasonable  beginning 
by  introducing  some  features  of  the  work  not  now 
attempted,  or  tried  in  such  meagre  fashion  as  to  be 
useless  and  disheartening.  As  there  are  in  many  places 
traveling  school  libraries,  so  there  may  well  be  added 
traveling  school  librarians.  It  is  imperative  that  for 
this  service  there  must  be  sought  a  type  of  teacher- 
librarian  capable  by  reason  of  natural  ability  and  edu- 
cation to  command  the  confidence  of  the  teaching 
corps  as  a  counselor,  and  of  the  student  body  as  a 
friendly  element  in  the  school,  disassociated  from  the 
thought  of  book  use  based  on  compulsion.  A  teacher- 
librarian  so  qualified  could  exert  an  important  influ- 
ence in  shaping  the  future  of  the  children. 

In  his  inimitable,  whimsical  fashion,  Bernard 
Shaw  brings  out  with  sympathy  and  humor  something 
of  this  spirit  of  compulsion  which  schools  typify: 

"There  is,  on  the  whole,  nothing  on  earth  intended  for  innocent 
people  so  horrible  as  a  school.  To  begin  with,  it  is  a  prison.  But 
it  is  in  some  respects  more  cruel  than  a  prison.  In  a  prison,  for 
instance,  you  are  not  forced  to  read  books  written  by  the  warders 
and  the  governor  (who,  of  course,  would  not  be  warders  and  gov- 
ernors if  they  could  write  readable  books),  and  are  therefore  beaten 
or  otherwise  tormented  if  you  cannot  remember  their  utterly  unmem- 
orable  contents.  In  the  prison  you  are  not  forced  to  sit  listening  to 
turnkeys  discoursing  without  charm  or  interest  on  subjects  that  they 
don't  understand  and  don't  care  about,  and  are  therefore  incapable  of 
making  you  understand  or  care  about.  In  a  prison  they  may  torture 
your  body ;  but  they  do  not  torture  your  brains ;  and  they  protect  you 
against  violence  and  outrage  from  your  fellow  prisoners.  In  a  school 
you  have  none  of  these  advantages.  With  the  world's  book-shelves 
loaded  with  fascinating  and  inspired  books — the  very  manna  sent 
down  from  heaven  to  feed  your  souls — you  are  forced  to  read  a 


NEXT  STEPS  27 

hideous  imposture  called  a  school  book,  written  by  a  man  who  cannot 
write ;  a  book  from  which  no  human  being  can  learn  anything ;  a  book 
which,  though  you  may  decipher  it,  you  cannot  in  any  fruitful  sense 
read,  though  the  enforced  attempt  will  make  you  loathe  the  sight  of 
a  book  all  the  rest  of  your  life.  It  is  a  ghastly  business,  quite  beyond 
words,  this  schooling." 

The  late  Professor  Norton  is  credited5  with  the 
statement  that  a  taste  for  literature  is  a  result  of  culti- 
vation more  often  than  a  gift  of  nature,  and  that  the 
years  of  the  elementary  school  seem  to  be  the  time  in 
which  the  taste  takes  deepest  root.  Dr.  Scott  Nearing6 
points  out  that  the  old  education  presupposed  an 
average  child  and  then  prepared  a  course  of  study 
which  would  fit  his  needs.  The  new  education,  he 
contends,  recognizes  the  absurdity  of  averaging  unlike 
quantities,  and  accepts  the  ultimate  truth  that  each 
child  is  an  individual,  differing  in  needs,  capacity, 
outlook,  energy,  and  enthusiasm  from  every  other 
child.  An  arithmetic  average  can  be  struck,  but  when 
it  is  applied  to  children  it  is  a  hypothetical  and  not  a 
real  quantity.  There  is  not,  and  never  will  be,  an 
average  child;  hence,  a  school  system  planned  to  meet 
the  needs  of  the  average  child  fits  the  needs  of  no 
child  at  all. 

Rightly  directed,  library  influences  in  elementary 
schools  would  modify  the  machine-like  formula  giving 
to  all  children  alike  at  the  same  time  the  same  mental 
food  to  eat  and  the  same  moral  garb  to  wear.  As 
Dr.  Bird  T.  Baldwin  notes  in  his  ingenious  statement 
of  the  five  ages  of  childhood,  school  children  are  in- 
evitably different;  even  when  children  are  born  on  the 
same  day,  the  chances  that  they  will  grow  physically, 
mentally  and  morally  at  exactly  the  same  rate,  and  will 

6Lowe.     Literature  for  Children. 
'Nearing,   Scott.     The  New  Education. 


28  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

make  exactly  the  same  progress  in  school,  are  remote 
indeed. 

A  teacher-librarian  having  special  aptitude  for 
the  post  could  render  service  of  inestimable  value  to 
teachers  as  well  as  to  their  pupils,  in  becoming  the 
active  medium  between  public  school  and  public 
library.  By  securing  the  right  books  from  the  library 
for  home  reading,  by  providing  picture  material  and 
reference  sources  for  class  room  use,  by  conducting 
story  hours  and  reading  clubs,  by  giving  instruction 
in  the  use  of  the  library  and  the  keys  that  open  books, 
by  giving  stimulus  to  the  ambitions  and  capacities  of 
individual  pupils,  by  intimate  co-operation  with  the 
work  of  vocational  guidance,  the  librarian  would 
prove  her  worth.  Nor  would  the  least  useful  function 
of  the  school  libraries  be  that  of  an  evening  study 
place  for  those  tens  of  thousands  of  children  whose 
home  conditions  absolutely  preclude  thought  of,  or 
opportunity  for,  study  out  of  school  hours. 

It  may  be  contended  that  these  services  are  pro- 
vided by  branch  libraries  and  their  juvenile  depart- 
ments. What  are  the  facts?  Early  in  the  present 
month  twenty  million  boys  and  girls  went  more  or  less 
willingly  to  school.  Our  consolidated  library  statis- 
tics show  that  considerably  less  than  one  million  of 
them  use  our  public  libraries.  Despite  our  imposing 
figures  of  circulation,  we  reach  but  5  per  cent  of  the 
juvenile  population. 

If  there  are  urgent  reasons  for  increased  library 
effort  in  connection  with  grade  schools,  these  apply 
with  multiplied  force  as  to  high  schools.  Here,  in- 
deed, the  deterrent  factor  of  enormous  and  prohibitive 
cost  would  not  obtain,  because  they  are  fewer  in  num- 
ber; and  in  proportion  to  total  cost  of  maintenance, 
the  added  percentage  of  cost  would  be  comparatively 


NEXT  STEPS  29 

small.  There  are  in  the  United  States  8,300  high 
schools  with  a  four-year  course,  and  3,250  carrying 
a  three-year  course.  In  every  one  of  the  11,500  high 
schools  there  should  be  a  well-equipped  and  well- 
administered  library.  Preferably,  those  that  are  lo- 
cated in  cities  where  there  are  strong  public  libraries 
should  be  conducted  as  branches  of  the  local  public 
library.  Such  management  would  assure  better  admin- 
istration. School  management  would  imperil  in  many 
instances  the  selection  of  librarians  fitted  for  the  task. 
Too  often,  as  experience  has  demonstrated,  the  govern- 
ing body  would  assign  to  the  post  derelict  teachers 
unfitted  by  reason  of  age  or  physical  handicap,  and 
unfortunate  deficiencies  in  other  respects.  On  the 
other  hand,  public  library  authorities  must  recognize 
more  tangibly  than  they  do  now  that  high  school 
librarians  must  possess  not  only  library  training  in  the 
machinery  of  routine  performance,  but  also  university 
education,  teaching  experience,  and  qualifications  of 
personality  and  temperament  that  will  place  them  on 
a  level  with  other  members  of  the  faculty. 

In  the  high  schools  we  find  the  sifted  grain  of  the 
elementary  schools.  It  is  there  that  the  potential 
qualities  of  originality  and  genius  which  will  later 
make  their  impress  upon  the  course  of  industry  and 
government  must  be  quickened  and  given  direction. 
More  and  more  it  is  coming  to  be  realized  that  to 
grasp  without  failure  the  complexities  of  modern  life 
native  intelligence  no  longer  suffices. 

Intelligence  must  be  sharpened  by  education  and 
given  power  by  experience.  The  self-made  man  who 
achieved  success  untaught,  unlettered,  and  unaided 
save  by  his  own  efforts  of  hand  and  brain,  has  become 
a  legendary  hero.  Appreciation  of  changed  conditions 
may  be  found  in  the  records  of  increased  attendance 


30  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

in  the  high  schools.  That  increase  has  been  at  a 
greater  rate  than  that  of  the  population.  In  1890  there 
were  but  59  pupils  for  every  ten  thousand  inhabitants; 
in  1895  there  were  79;  in  1900  there  were  95;  in  1910 
there  were  100;  and  now  the  number  is  considerably 
in  excess,  statistics  for  1914  showing  117.  Thus,  in 
twenty-five  years,  the  percentage  of  high  school  attend- 
ance has  nearly  doubled. 

Again  we  find  the  school  people  without  perception 
of  the  great  value  which  a  properly  conducted  library 
would  bring  to  a  high  school.  In  his  recently  pub- 
lished book,  "The  New  Education/'  Dr.  Scott  Near- 
ing  describes  an  up-to-date  high  school: 

"The  modern  high  school,"  he  says,  "is  housed  in 
a  building  which  contains,  in  addition  to  the  regular 
classrooms,  gymnasiums,  a  swimming  tank,  physics 
and  chemical  laboratories;  cooking,  sewing,  and  mil- 
linery rooms ;  woodworking,  forge,  and  machine  shops ; 
drawing  rooms;  a  music  room;  a  room  devoted  to  arts 
and  crafts;  and  an  assembly  room.  This  arrangement 
of  rooms  presupposes  Mr.  Gilbert's  plan  of  making 
the  high  school,  like  the  community,  an  aggregation 
of  every  sort  of  people,  doing  every  sort  of  work." 

When  some  of  the  foremost  leaders  in  education 
leave  out  of  a  list  of  desiderata  for  the  high  school 
what  the  universities  have  come  to  regard  as  the  very 
heart  of  the  institution — the  library — is  there  marvel 
that  the  love  of  literature  is  being  strangled  in  the 
schools?  Required  reading  of  classics,  and  the  use  of 
literary  masterpieces  for  classroom  dissection  has  taken 
away  the  pure  joy  of  reading  and  made  the  study  of 
literature  a  mere  literary  autopsy.  Here  is  the  testi- 
mony of  a  teacher  who  places  herself  on  the  witness 
stand:7 

'Hodgson,   Elizabeth.     The   Adolescent's  Prejudice   Against   the   Classics. 
English  Journal,  Sept.,  1915. 


NEXT  STEPS  31 

"Sometimes  the  high  school  course  works  as  a  sort 
of  vaccination  to  prevent  their  taking  literature  seri- 
ously. 

"Most  teachers  of  English  have  had  at  times  the 
experience  holding  open  a  volume  of  Shakespeare 
with  one  hand,  while  with  the  other  they  waved  some 
sort  of  scholastic  rod  over  the  head  of  a  rebellious 
young  modern.  Though  'classics'  are  probably  swal- 
lowed with  less  forcible  feeding  than  grammar,  spell- 
ing, and  rhetoric,  yet  even  those  dilutable  bits  of  liter- 
ature that  have  been  considered  food  for  the  gods  of 
culture  are  gulped  down  wry-facedly  by  some  bar- 
barians. By  judicious  skimming  and  cramming  they 
may  perforce  capture  the  irreducible  minimum  of 
scanty  and  fugitive  facts  about  the  masterpieces  pre- 
scribed for  their  edification;  but  at  the  first  safe 
moment  they  joyously  forget  them,  and  betake  them- 
selves to  the  cheaper  theaters,  the  thrilling  dailies,  and 
the  popular  novelists. 

"The  truth  is  that  literature  teachers  are  devoted 
champions  of  a  lost  cause.  Some  of  the  dead  authors 
appear  to  be  so  irrevocably  dead  that  no  amount  of 
artificial  respiration  can  put  any  breath  of  life  into 
their  works  so  far  as  the  ordinary  high  school  student 
is  concerned. 

"It  would  be  enticingly  easy  to  win  over  students 
to  a  course  in  journalism,  modern  magazines,  and  con- 
temporary novels  and  dramas. 

"We  cannot  expect  to  overcome  all  the  narrowing 
and  even  vulgarizing  influences  that  surround  many  of 
our  young  people;  but  at  least  we  should  improve  their 
judgment  enough  to  make  them  reject  the  cheapest, 
shallowest,  and  most  distorted  contemporary  writings." 

One  chapter  of  Ernest  Poole's  story  of  "The  Har- 


32  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

bor"  tells  of  his  school  experience.     A  passage  from 
it  is  worth  quoting: 

"What  a  desert  of  knowledge  it  was  back  there.  Our  placid 
tolerance  of  the  profs  included  the  books  they  gave  us.  The  history 
prof  gave  us  ten  books  of  collateral  reading.  Each  book,  if  we 
could  pledge  our  honor  as  gentlemen  that  we  had  read  it,  counted  us 
five  in  examination.  On  the  night  before  the  examination  I  happened 
to  enter  the  room  of  one  of  our  football  giants,  and  found  him  sur- 
rounded by  five  freshmen,  all  of  whom  were  reading  aloud.  One  was 
reading  a  book  on  Russia,  another  the  life  of  Frederick  the  Great, 
a  third  was  patiently  droning  forth  Napoleon's  war  on  Europe,  while 
over  on  the  window-seat  the  other  two  were  racing  through  volumes 
one  and  two  of  Carlyle's  French  Revolution.  The  room  was  a  per- 
fect babel  of  sound.  But  the  big  man  sat  and  smoked  his  pipe,  his 
honor  safe  and  the  morrow  secure.  In  later  years,  whatever  might 
happen  across  the  sea  would  find  this  fellow  fully  prepared,  a  wise, 
intelligent  judge  of  the  world,  with  a  college  education." 

Into  the  atmosphere  of  the  school  must  be  intro- 
duced some  element  that  will  bring  to  the  growing 
boys  and  girls  JSL  love  of  reading  and  a  genuine  desire 
for  absorbing  those  vital  forces  of  life  which  literature 
images.  If  we  believe  that  the  ultimate  aim  of  educa- 
tion is  that  of  the  ultimate  aim  of  life,  there  must 
be  that  attenion  to  the  individual  need  which  in  the 
end  makes  for  the  uplifting  of  all.  To  that  end  the 
means  must  be  wrought.  If  the  school  must  deal  per- 
force with  groups  rather  than  with  units,  the  methods 
of  the  library  adapt  themselves  to  the  converse  plan 
of  individual  treatment.  If  the  school  narrows  the 
pathway  by  compulsion,  the  library  gives  the  joy  of 
freedom  unrestricted.  Therein  lies  its  potency,  and 
therein  does  it  make  appeal  not  to  the  few  elect,  but 
to  the  many.  And  herein  lies  its  greater  service. 

"Progress  is 

The  law  of  life,  man  is  not  man  as  yet, 
Nor  shall  I  deem  his  object  served,  his  end 


NEXT  STEPS  33 

Attained,  his  genuine  strength  put  fairly  forth, 

While  only  here  and  there  a  star  dispels 

The  darkness,  here  and  there  a  towering  mind 

O'erlooks  its  prostrate  fellows:  when  the  host 

Is  out  at  once  to  the  despair  of  night, 

When  all  mankind  alike  is  perfected, 

Equal  in  full-blown  powers — then,  not  till  then, 

I  say,  begins  man's  general  infancy." 

Wherefore  this  emphasis  upon  the  school  side  of 
library  work?  Not,  of  course,  at  the  expense  of  the 
service  which  is  furnished  to  young  and  old  in  relief 
from  the  drab  dullness  of  life,  but  parallel  with  it, 
must  the  library  labor.  For  here  lies  its  mission  of 
permanent  influences,  and  at  no  time  has  there  been 
greater  need. 

Suddenly,  the  seemingly  well-fortified  pillars  of 
civilization  have  crumbled.  Confused,  dismayed,  dis- 
heartened, society  witnesses  rapid  disintegration  of 
foundations  which  centuries  of  patient  endeavor  have 
constructed.  Science,  thought  to  be  the  instrument  of 
man's  weal,  has  become  the  subtle  and  baleful  agent 
of  destruction.  The  racial  hyphen,  long  looked  upon 
as  the  symbol  of  cohesion,  has  become  the  sign  of  sep- 
aration. The  Christian  nations  of  the  earth  are  at  each 
other's  throats  with  a  ferocity  and  malignity  unparal- 
leled. Under  a  flag  which  shelters  ninety  millions  of 
individuals  whose  forebears  peopled  every  land  upon 
the  habitable  globe,  and  who  seek  to  merge  the  best  of 
their  racial  qualities  in  a  common  life  that  shall  typify 
a  new  standard  of  civilization,  must  be  wrought  that 
miracle  of  human  evolution  which  shall  establish  con- 
cord and  good  will  between  members  of  alien  races 
dwelling  together.  To  effect  this  it  must  be  demon- 
strated that  "assimilation  is  a  matter  of  understanding 
and  ideas,  and  not  merely  of  manners  and  customs." 


34  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

And  so,  despite  the  gloomy  murk  that  now  envelops 
the  world,  we  must  realize  the  need  of  beginning  the 
reconstruction  of  our  demolished  ideals. 

This  is  the  day  of  readjustments.  We  must  begin 
again,  but  we  must  begin  at  the  point  of  beginning, 
with  the  plastic  mind  of  youth.  Happily,  if  not  now, 
generations  hence,  the  world  may  realize  the  poet's 
prophecy,  and  the  hope  it  holds: 

"For  no  new  sense  puts  forth  in  us  but  we 
Enter  our  fellow's  lives  thereby  the  more. 

And  three  great  spirits  with  the  spirit  of  man 

Go  forth  to  do  his  bidding.    One  is  free, 

And  one  is  shackled,  and  the  third,  unbound, 

Halts  yet  a  little  with  a  broken  chain 

Of  antique  workmanship,  not  wholly  loosed, 

That  dangles  and  impedes  his  forthright  way. 

Unfettered,  swift,  hawk-eyed,  implacable, 

The  wonder-worker,  Science,  with  his  wand, 

Subdues  an  alien  world  to  man's  desires. 

And  Art  with  wide  imaginative  wings 

Stands  by,  alert  for  flight,  to  bear  his  lord, 

Into  the  strange  heart  of  that  alien  world 

Till  he  shall  live  in  it  as  in  himself 

And  know  its  longing  as  he  knows  his  own. 

Behind  a  little,  where  the  shadows  fall, 

Lingers  Religion  with  deep-brooding  eyes, 

Serene,  impenetrable,  transpicuous 

As  the  all-clear  and  all-mysterious  sky, 

Biding  her  time  to  fuse  into  one  act 

Those  other  twain,  man's  right  hand  and  his  left. 

For  all  the  bonds  shall  be  broken  and  rent  in  sunder, 

And  the  soul  of  man  go  free 

Forth  with  those  three 

Into  the  lands  of  wonder; 

Like  some  undaunted  youth, 

Afield  in  quest  of  truth, 


NEXT  STEPS  35 

Rejoicing  in  the  road  he  journeys  on 

As  much  as  in  the  hope  of  journey  done. 

And  the  road  runs  east,  and  the  road  runs  west, 

That  his  vagrant  feet  explore ; 

And  he  knows  no  haste  and  he  knows  no  rest, 

And  every  mile  has  a  stranger  zest 

Then  the  miles  he  trod  before ; 

And  his  heart  leaps  high  in  the  nascent  year 

When  he  sees  the  purple  buds  appear: 

For  he  knows,  though  the  great  black  frost  may  blight 

The  hope  of  May  in  a  single  night, 

That  the  spring,  though  it  shrink  back  under  the  bark, 

But  bides  its  time  somewhere  in  the  dark — 

Though  it  come  not  now  to  its  blossoming, 

By  the  thrill  in  his  heart  he  knows  the  spring  ; 

And  the  greater  to-morrow  is  on  its  way". 

It  shall  keep  with  its  roses  yet  in  June; 

And  the  promise  it  makes  perchance  too  soon, 

For  the  ages  fret  not  over  a  day, 


THE  WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  THE  WORLD'S 

WORK1 

I 

URNING  for  a  text  to  Victor  Hugo's  stir- 
ring epic  of  Paris,  these  words  may  be 
found  in  the  section  for  May,  and  in  the 
third  chapter  thereof: 

"A  Library  implies  an  act  of  faith 
Which  generations  still  in  darkness  hid 
Sign  in  their  night,  in  witness  of  the  dawn." 

When  Johann  Gutenberg  in  his  secret  workshop 
poured  the  molten  metal  into  the  rough  matrices  he 
had  cut  for  separate  types,  the  instrument  for  the 
spread  of  democracy  was  created.  When  early  Cav- 
aliers and  Puritans  planted  the  crude  beginnings  of 
free  public  schools,  the  forces  of  democracy  were  mul- 
tiplied. When  half  a  century  ago  the  first  meager 
beginnings  of  the  public  library  movement  were 
evolved,  democracy  was  for  all  time  assured.  Thus 
have  three  great  stages,  separated  each  by  a  span  of 
two  hundred  years  from  that  preceding,  marked  that 
world  development  whose  ultimate  meaning  is  not 
equality  of  station  or  possession,  but  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity. 

Not  without  stress  and  strife  have  these  yet  frag- 
mentary results  been  achieved.  Not  without  travail 

President's  address   at  Kaaterskill   Conference,  American  Library  Asso- 
ciation, June,  1913. 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        37 

and  difficulties  will  universal  acceptance  be  accorded 
in  the  days  to  come.  But  no  one  may  doubt  the 
final  outcome  which  shall  crown  the  struggle  of  the 
centuries.  The  world  was  old  when  typography  was 
invented.  Less  than  five  centuries  have  passed  since 
then,  and  in  this  interval — but  a  brief  period  in  the 
long  history  of  human  endeavor — there  has  been  more 
enlargement  of  opportunity  for  the  average  man  and 
woman  than  in  all  the  time  that  went  before.  Without 
the  instrumentality  of  the  printed  page,  without  the 
reproductive  processes  that  give  to  all  the  world  in 
myriad  tongues  the  thought  of  all  the  centuries,  slavery, 
serfdom  and  feudalism  would  still  shackle  the  millions 
not  so  fortunate  as  to  be  born  to  purple  and  ermine, 
and  fine  linen. 

II 

The  evolution  of  the  book  is  therefore  the  history 
of  the  unfoldment  of  human  rights.  The  chained  tome 
in  its  medieval  prison  cell  has  been  supplanted  by  the 
handy  volume  freely  sent  from  the  hospitable  public 
library  to  the  homes  of  the  common  people.  The 
humblest  citizen,  today,  has  at  his  command  books  in 
number  and  in  kind  which  royal  treasuries  could  not 
have  purchased  five  hundred  years  ago.  In  the  six- 
teenth century,  it  took  a  flock  of  sheep  to  furnish  the 
vellum  for  one  edition  of  a  book,  and  the  product 
was  for  the  very  few;  in  the  twentieth,  a  forest  is  felled 
to  supply  the  paper  for  an  edition,  and  the  output  goes 
to  many  hundred  thousand  readers.  As  books  have 
multiplied,  learning  has  been  more  widely  dissemi- 
nated. As  more  people  have  become  educated,  the 
demand  for  books  has  increased  enormously.  The 
multiplication  of  books  has  stimulated  the  writing  of 
them,  and  the  inevitable  result  has  been  a  deterioration 

46191 


38  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

of  quality  proportioned  to  the  increase  in  quantity.  In 
the  English  language  alone,  since  1880,  206,905  titles 
of  books  printed  in  the  United  States  have  been  listed, 
and  226,365  in  Great  Britain  since  1882.  Of  these 
433,270  titles,  84,722  represent  novels — 36,607  issued 
in  the  United  States  and  48,115  in  Great  Britain. 
Despite  the  inclusion  of  the  trivial  and  the  unsound  in 
this  vast  mass  of  printed  stuff,  no  one  can  doubt  the 
magnitude  of  the  service  performed  in  the  advance- 
ment of  human  kind.  The  universities  have  felt  the 
touch  of  popular  demand,  and  in  this  country  at  least 
some  of  them  have  attempted  to  respond.  Through 
correspondence  courses,  short  courses,  university  week 
conferences,  summer  schools,  local  forums,  traveling 
instructors,  and  other  media  of  extension,  many  insti- 
tutions of  higher  learning  have  given  recognition  to 
the  appeal  of  the  masses.  Logically  with  this  enlarge- 
ment of  educational  opportunity,  the  amplification  of 
library  facilities  has  kept  pace.  The  libraries  have 
become  in  a  real  sense  the  laboratory  of  learning. 
Intended  primarily  as  great  storehouses  for  the  accu- 
mulation and  preservation  rather  than  the  use  of 
manuscripts  and  books,  their  doors  have  been  opened 
wide  to  all  farers  in  search  of  truth  or  mental  stimulus. 

In  a  report  to  the  English  King,  Sir  William 
Berkeley  wrote  as  governor  of  Virginia  in  1671 :  "I 
thank  God  there  are  no  free  schools  nor  printing,  and 
I  hope  we  shall  not  have  them  these  hundred  years; 
for  learning  has  brought  disobedience  into  the  world, 
and  printing  has  divulged  them,  and  libels  against  the 
best  government.  God  keep  us  from  both." 

Governor  Berkeley's  sentiments,  expressed  by  him 
in  turgid  rhetoric,  were  held  in  his  day  by  most  men 
in  authority,  but  that  did  not  prevent  the  planting  of 
little  schoolhouses  here  and  there,  and  men  of  much 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        39 

vision  and  little  property  bequeathed  their  possessions 
for  maintaining  them.  Many  a  school  had  its  origin 
in  a  bequest  comprising  a  few  milch  kine,  a  horse  or 
two,  or  a  crop  of  tobacco;  in  some  instances,  slaves. 
From  such  beginnings,  with  such  endowments,  was 
evolved  three  hundred  years  ago  the  public  system  of 
education  which  today  prodigally  promises,  though  it 
but  niggardly  realizes,  sixteen  years  of  schooling  for 
every  boy  and  girl  in  the  land. 

If  the  span  of  years  needed  for  the  development  of 
the  free  library  system  has  been  much  shorter,  the 
hostile  attitude  of  influential  men  and  the  privations 
that  attended  pioneer  efforts  were  no  less  marked.  As 
recently  as  1889  the  writer  of  an  article  in  the  North 
American  Review  labeled  his  attack:  "Are  public 
libraries  public  blessings?"  and  answered  his  own 
question  in  no  uncertain  negative.  "Not  only  have  the 
public  libraries,  as  a  whole,  failed  to  reach  their 
proper  aim  of  giving  the  means  of  education  to  the 
people,"  he  protested,  "but  they  have  gone  aside  from 
their  true  path  to  furnish  amusement,  and  that  in  part 
of  a  pernicious  character,  chiefly  to  the  young."  And 
he  added:  "I  might  have  mentioned  other  possible 
dangers,  such  as  the  power  of  the  directors  of  any 
library  to  make  it  a  propaganda  of  any  delusive  ism 
or  doctrine  subversive  of  morality,  society  or  govern- 
ment; but  I  prefer  to  rest  my  case  here." 

And  it  was  somewhat  later  than  this  that  the  pages 
of  the  Century  gave  space  to  correspondence  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  establishment  of  a  public  library  system 
for  the  city  of  New  York. 

These  were  but  echoes  of  earlier  antagonisms. 


40  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

III 

For  the  documentary  material  dealing  with  the 
beginnings  of  the  public  library  movement,  the  searcher 
must  delve  within  the  thousand  pages  of  a  portly  folio 
volume  issued  by  the  British  government  sixty  years 
ago.  If  one  possesses  patience  sufficient  to  read  the 
immense  mass  of  dry  evidence  compiled  by  a  par- 
liamentary commission  and  "presented  to  both  houses 
of  parliament  by  command  of  Her  Majesty,"  some 
interesting  facts  in  library  history  will  be  found.  A 
young  man  of  twenty-three,  then  an  underling  in  the 
service  of  the  British  Museum,  afterwards  an  eminent 
librarian,  was  one  of  the  principal  witnesses.  Edward 
Edwards  had  the  gift  of  vision.  Half  a  century  before 
public  libraries  became  the  people's  universities,  as 
they  are  today,  his  prophetic  tongue  gave  utterance  to 
what  has  since  become  the  keynote  of  library  aims  and 
policies.  Badgered  by  hostile  inquisitors,  ridiculed 
by  press  and  politicians,  he  undeviatingly  clung  to  his 
views,  and  he  lived  to  see  his  prophecy  realized. 

Great  libraries  there  had  been  before  his  day; 
remarkable  as  a  storehouse  of  knowledge  in  printed 
form  was,  and  is  in  our  own  day,  the  institution  with 
which  he  was  associated.  But  in  these  rich  reference 
collections  intended  for  the  student  of  research,  the 
element  of  popular  use  was  lacking.  To  have  sug- 
gested the  loan  of  a  single  book  for  use  outside  the  four 
walls  of  the  library  would  have  startled  and  benumbed 
everyone  in  authority — and  without  authority — from 
the  members  of  the  governing  board  to  librarian,  sub- 
librarians, and  messenger  boys.  This  stripling  faced 
the  members  of  parliament,  and  without  hesitation 
proclaimed  his  thesis. 

"It  is  not  merely  to  open  the  library  to  persons 
who,  from  the  engrossing  nature  of  their  engagements 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        41 

of  business,  are  at  present  utterly  excluded  from  it, 
but  it  is  also  that  the  library  may  be  made  a  direct 
agent  in  some  degree  in  the  work  of  national  educa- 
tion. Let  not  anyone  be  alarmed  lest  something  very 
theoretical  or  very  revolutionary  should  be  proposed. 
I  merely  suggest  that  the  library  should  be  opened  to 
a  class  of  men  quite  shut  out  from  it  by  its  present 
regulations." 

Then  he  added:  "In  such  a  country  as  this,  there 
should  be  one  great  national  storehouse.  But  in  addi- 
tion to  this,  there  should  be  libraries  in  different  quar- 
ters on  a  humbler  scale,  very  freely  accessible." 

One  of  the  ablest  members  of  parliament,  William 
Ewart,  of  Liverpool,  became  intensely  interested  in 
the  views  expressed  by  young  Edwards,  and  from  that 
day  was  counted  the  consistent  champion  of  library 
privileges  for  the  common  people.  Largely  through 
his  instrumentality,  aided  by  such  men  as  Richard 
Cobden,  John  Bright  and  Joseph  Brotherton,  parlia- 
ment passed  an  act  "for  the  encouragement  of  muse- 
ums." Out  of  this  measure  grew  the  later  Public 
Libraries  Act.  This  notable  step  was  not  accom- 
plished without  bitter  opposition. 

"The  next  thing  we  will  be  asked  to  do,"  said  one 
indignant  member  on  the  floor  of  the  House,  "is  to 
furnish  people  with  quoits  and  peg-tops  and  footballs 
at  the  expense  of  taxpayers.  Soon  we  will  be  thinking 
of  introducing  the  performances  of  Punch  for  the 
amusement  of  the  people." 

Events  in  England  influenced  similar  movements 
in  the  United  States.  In  a  letter  to  Edward  Everett, 
in  1851,  Mr.  George  Ticknor  gave  the  first  impetus 
to  the  establishment  of  a  free  public  library  in  Boston 
—the  first  in  the  new  world  to  be  maintained  perma- 
nently by  the  people  for  the  people. 


42  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

"I  would  establish  a  library  which  differs  from  all 
free  libraries  yet  attempted,"  he  wrote.  "I  mean  one 
in  which  any  popular  books,  tending  to  moral  and 
intellectual  improvement,  shall  be  furnished  in  such 
numbers  of  copies  that  many  persons  can  be  reading 
the  same  book  at  the  same  time;  in  short,  that  not  only 
the  best  books  of  all  sorts,  but  the  pleasant  literature 
of  the  day,  shall  be  made  accessible  to  the  whole  people 
when  they  most  care  for  it;  that  is,  when  it  is  new  and 
fresh." 

Sixty  years  after  the  date  of  Mr.  Ticknor's  letter, 
and  chiefly  within  the  last  two  decades  of  the  period, 
the  public  library  movement  has  assumed  a  place  in 
public  education  which,  relatively,  the  public  school 
movement  attained  only  after  three  hundred  years  of 
effort.  When  Thomas  Bodley  died,  in  1613,  in  all 
Europe  there  were  but  three  libraries  accessible  to  the 
public — the  Bodleian,  the  Angelo  Rocca  at  Rome  and 
the  Ambrosian  at  Milan.  In  1841  the  Penny  Cyclo- 
pedia devoted  about  four  inches  of  a  narrow  column 
to  the  subject  of  libraries,  ancient  and  modern,  and 
limited  its  reference  to  American  libraries  to  one 
sentence,  obtained  at  second  hand  from  an  older  con- 
temporary. 

"In  the  United  States  of  America,  according  to  the 
Encyclopedia  Americana,  the  principal  libraries  are, 
or  were  in  1831,  that  of  Harvard  College,  containing 
36,000  volumes;  the  Philadelphia  Library,  containing 
27,000;  that  of  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  containing 
26,000;  that  of  Congress,  containing  16,000,  and  that 
of  Charleston,  containing  13,000." 

It  is  only  since  1867  that  the  federal  government 
has  deemed  it  worth  while  to  compile  library  statistics, 
and  the  first  comprehensive  figures  were  gathered  in 
1875.  It  is  worth  noting  that  then  they  embraced  all 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        43 

libraries  comprising  300  volumes,  and  that  in  1893 
no  mention  is  made  of  collections  containing  less  than 
a  thousand  volumes,  while  the  most  recent  official 
enumeration  makes  5,000  volumes  the  unit  of  consider- 
ation. From  these  official  figures  may  be  gleaned 
something  of  the  extraordinary  growth  of  libraries, 
both  numerically  and  in  size.  In  1875,  including 
school  libraries,  there  were  2,039  containing  a  thou- 
sand volumes,  ten  years  later  there  were  4,026,  ten 
years  after  that  8,000,  and  at  this  date  there  are  in  this 
class  not  less  than  12,000,  while  the  recorded  number 
comprising  three  hundred  volumes  or  more  reaches 
the  substantial  total  of  15,634,  and  2,298  of  these  cata- 
log in  excess  of  5,000  volumes  each. 

IV 

These  figures  show  phenomenal  growth,  but  even 
more  impressive  are  the  facts  that  give  their  full 
meaning  in  detail.  From  a  striking  compilation  issued 
in  Germany  by  Die  Briicke  a  few  weeks  ago,  together 
with  figures  extracted  by  means  of  a  questionnaire,  sup- 
plemented by  statistical  material  gathered  by  the 
Bureau  of  Education,  the  facts  which  follow  have 
been  deduced:  Counting  the  great  libraries  of  the 
world,  the  six  continents  abutting  the  seven  seas  pos- 
sess 324  libraries  whose  book  collections  number  in 
excess  of  100,000  volumes  each,  and  of  these  79 — or 
approximately  one-fourth — are  located  in  the  Amer- 
icas. Of  the  79  American  libraries  72  are  in  the 
United  States,  including  university,  public,  govern- 
mental and  miscellaneous  institutions,  with  a  combined 
collection  of  19,295,000  volumes.  If  this  statistical 
inquiry  is  pursued  further,  a  reason  becomes  apparent 
why  millions  are  starved  for  want  of  books  while  other 
millions  seemingly  have  a  surfeit  of  them.  The  rural 


44  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

regions,  save  in  a  handful  of  commonwealths  whose 
library  commissions  or  state  libraries  actively  admin- 
ister traveling  libraries,  the  book  supply  is  practically 
negligible.  Even  the  hundreds  of  itinerating  libraries 
but  meagerly  meet  the  want.  All  the  traveling  libra- 
ries in  all  the  United  States  have  a  total  issue  annually 
less  than  that  of  any  one  twenty  municipal  systems 
that  can  be  named.  The  public  library  facilities  in 
at  least  six  thousand  of  the  smaller  towns  are  pitifully 
insufficient  and  in  hundreds  of  them  wholly  absent. 
The  movement  to  supply  books  to  the  people  was  first 
launched  in  the  rural  regions  seventy  years  ago.  In- 
deed, the  movement  for  popular  education  known  as 
the  American  Lyceum,  which  forecast  the  activities 
of  the  modern  public  library  just  as  the  mechanics' 
institutes  of  Great  Britain  prepared  the  soil  for  them 
in  that  country,  flourished  chiefly  in  the  less  thickly 
settled  centers  of  population.  The  early  district  school 
libraries  melted  away  in  New  York  state  and  Wiscon- 
sin and  other  states,  and  the  devastated  shelves  have 
never  been  amply  renewed.  The  library  commissions 
are  valiantly  and  energetically  endeavoring  to  supply 
the  want,  but  their  efforts  are  all  too  feebly  supported 
by  their  respective  states.  In  this  particular,  the  pol- 
icy is  that  which  unfortunately  obtains  as  to  all  edu- 
cational effort.  More  than  55  per  cent  of  the  young 
people  from  6  to  20  years  old — about  17,000,000  of 
them — live  in  the  country  or  in  towns  of  less  than 
two  thousand  inhabitants.  According  to  an  official  re- 
port from  which  this  statement  is  extracted,  there  are 
5,000  country  schools  still  taught  in  primitive  log 
houses,  uncomfortable,  unsuitable,  unventilated,  un- 
sanitary, illy  equipped,  poorly  lighted,  imperfectly 
heated — boys  and  girls  in  all  stages  of  advancement 
receiving  instruction  from  one  teacher  of  very  low 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        45 

grade.  It  is  plain  why,  in  the  summing  up  of  this  re- 
port, "illiteracy  in  rural  territory  is  twice  as  great  as 
in  urban  territory,  notwithstanding  that  thousands  of 
illiterate  immigrants  are  crowded  in  the  great  manu- 
facturing and  industrial  centers.  The  illiteracy  among 
native-born  children  of  native  parentage  is  more  than 
three  times  as  great  as  among  native  children  of 
foreign  parentage,  largely  on  account  of  the  lack  of 
opportunities  for  education  in  rural  America."  In 
Indian  legend  Nokomis,  the  earth,  symbolizes  the 
strength  of  motherhood;  it  may  yet  chance  that  the 
classic  myth  of  the  hero  who  gained  his  strength  be- 
cause he  kissed  the  earth  may  be  fully  understood  in 
America  only  when  the  people  learn  that  they  will 
remain  strong,  as  Mr.  Miinsterberg  has  put  it,  "only  by 
returning  with  every  generation  to  the  soil." 

If  the  states  have  proved  recreant  to  duty  in  this 
particular,  the  municipalities  have  shown  an  increasing 
conception  of  educational  values.  The  figures  make 
an  imposing  statistical  array.  In  the  United  States 
there  are  1,222  incorporated  places  of  5,000  or  more 
inhabitants,  and  their  libraries  house  90,000,000  vol- 
umes, with  a  total  yearly  use  aggregating  110,000,000 
issues.  Four  million  volumes  a  year  are  added  to  their 
shelves,  and  collectively  they  derive  an  income  of 
$20,000,000.  Their  permanent  endowments,'  which  it 
must  be  regretfully  said  but  600  of  them  share,  now 
aggregate  $40,000,000.  Nearly  all  of  these  libraries 
occupy  buildings  of  their  own,  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie 
having  supplied  approximately  $42,226,338  for  the 
purpose  in  the  United  States,  and  the  balance  of  the 
$100,000,000  represented  in  buildings  having  been 
donated  by  local  benefactors  or  raised  by  taxation. 

The  population  of  these  1,222  places  is  38,758,584, 
considerably  less  than  half  that  of  the  entire  United 


46  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

States.  Their  book  possessions,  on  the  other  hand,  are 
nine  times  as  great  as  those  in  the  rest  of  the  country; 
the  circulation  of  the  books  nearly  twelve  times  in 
volume.  Closer  analysis  of  these  figures  enforces  still 
more  strongly  the  actual  concentration  of  the  available 
book  supply.  The  hundred  largest  cities  of  the  United 
States,  varying  in  size  from  a  minimum  of  53,684  to  a 
maximum  of  4,766,883,  possess  in  the  aggregate  more 
books  than  all  the  rest  of  the  country  together,  and 
represent  the  bulk  of  the  trained  professional  service 
rendered.  The  great  majority  of  the  3,000  graduates 
whom  the  library  schools  have  sent  into  service  since 
the  first  class  was  organized  in  1887,  are  in  these 
libraries  and  in  the  university  libraries.  Forty  per  cent 
of  the  books  circulated  are  issued  to  the  dwellers  in 
these  one  hundred  cities,  and  in  fifteen  of  them  the 
stupendous  total  of  30,000,834  issues  for  home  reading 
was  recorded  last  year.  Without  such  analysis  as  this, 
the  statistical  totals  would  be  misleading.  The  con- 
centration of  resources  and  of  trained  service  in  large 
centers  of  population,  comparatively  few  in  number, 
makes  evident  the  underlying  cause  for  the  modern 
trend  of  library  development.  A  further  study  of 
conditions  in  these  human  hives  justifies  the  specialized 
forms  of  service  which  have  become  a  marked  factor 
in  library  extension  within  a  decade.  With  increased 
resources,  with  vastly  improved  internal  machinery, 
with  enlarged  conception  of  opportunity  for  useful 
service,  have  come  greater  liberality  of  rules  and  ever 
widening  circles  of  activity,  until  today  no  individual 
and  no  group  of  individuals,  remains  outside  the  radius 
of  library  influence.  If  this  awakened  zeal  has 
spurred  to  efforts  that  seem  outside  the  legitimate 
sphere  of  library  work,  no  undue  concern  need  be  felt. 
Neither  the  genius  and  enthusiasm  of  the  individual 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        47 

nor  the  enterprise  of  a  group  of  individuals  will  ever 
be  permitted  to  go  too  rapidly  or  too  far:  the  world's 
natural  conservatism  and  inherited  unbelief  stand  ever 
ready  to  retard  or  prevent. 

V 

Specialization  has  been  incorporated  into  library 
administration  chiefly  to  give  expeditious  and  thorough 
aid  to  seekers  of  information  touching  a  wide  variety 
of  interests — business  men,  legislators,  craftsmen,  spe- 
cial investigators  and  students  of  every  sort.  This 
added  duty  has  not  diminished  its  initial  function  to 
make  available  the  literature  of  all  time,  nor  to  satisfy 
those  who  go  to  books  for  the  pure  joy  of  reading. 
The  recreative  service  of  the  library  is  as  important 
as  the  educative,  or  the  informative.  For  the  great 
mass  of  people,  the  problem  has  been  the  problem  of 
toil  long  and  uninterrupted.  The  successful  struggle 
of  the  unions  to  restrict  the  hours  of  labor  has  devel- 
oped another  problem  almost  as  serious — the  problem 
of  leisure.  Interwoven  with  this  acute  problem  is 
another  which  subdivision  of  labor  has  introduced  into 
modern  industrial  occupations — the  terrible  fatigue 
which  results  from  a  monotonous  repetition  of  the 
same  process  hour  after  hour,  day  after  day,  week  after 
week.  Such  blind  concentration  in  the  making  of  but 
one  piece  of  a  machine,  or  a  garment,  or  a  watch,  or 
any  other  article  of  merchandise,  without  knowledge 
of  its  relationship  to  the  rest,  soon  wears  the  human 
worker  out.  There  must  be  an  outlet  of  play,  of  fun, 
or  recreation.  The  librarian  need  not  feel  apologetic 
to  the  public  because  perchance  his  circulation  sta- 
tistics show  that  70  per  cent  of  it  is  classed  as  fiction. 
If  he  wishes  to  reduce  this  percentage  to  69  or  68  or 
61,  let  him  do  it  not  by  discouraging  the  reading  of 


48  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

novels,  but  by  stimulating  the  use  of  books  in  other 
classes  of  literature.     But  well  does  he  merit  his  own 
sense  of  humiliation  and  the  condemnation  of  the  crit- 
ics if  he  needs  must  feel  ashamed  of  the  kind  of  novels 
that  he  puts  upon  his   shelves.     To   quote   a   fellow 
librarian  who  expresses  admirably  the  value  of  such 
literature,  "A  good  story  has  created  many  an  oasis  in 
many  an  otherwise  arid  life.    Many-sidedness  of  inter- 
est makes  for  good  morals,  and  millions  of  our  fellows 
step  through  the  pages  of  a  story  book  into  a  broader 
world  than  their  nature  and  their  circumstances  ever 
permit  them  to  visit.     If  anything  is  to  stay  the  nar- 
rowing  and   hardening   process   which   specialization 
of  learning,  specialization  of  inquiry  and  of  industry, 
and  swift  accumulation  of  wealth  are  setting  up  among 
us,   it  is   a   return   to    romance,    poetry,    imagination, 
fancy,  and  the  general  culture  we  are  now  taught  to 
despise.    Of  all  these  the  novel  is  a  part;  rather,  in  the 
novel  are  all  of  these.     But  a  race  may  surely  find 
springing  up  in  itself  a  fresh  love  of  romance,  in  the 
high  sense  of  that  word,  which  can  keep  it  active,  hope- 
ful, ardent,  progressive.     Perhaps  the  novel  is  to  be, 
in  the  next  decades,  part  of  the  outward  manifestation 
of  a  new  birth  of  this  love  of  breadth  and  happiness." 

VI 

Many  of  the  factory  workers  are  young  men  and 
young  women,  whose  starved  imaginations  seek  an  out- 
let that  will  not  be  denied.  In  lieu  of  wholesome 
recreation  and  material,  they  will  find  "clues  to  life's 
perplexities"  in  salacious  plays,  in  cheap  vaudeville 
performances,  in  the  suggestive  pages  of  railway  liter- 
ature, in  other  ways  that  make  for  a  lowering  of  moral 
tone.  The  reaction  that  craves  amusement  of  any  sort 
is  manifest  in  the  nightly  crowded  stalls  of  the  cheap 
theaters.  Eight  million  spectators  view  every  moving 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        49 

picture  film  that  is  manufactured.  It  is  estimated  that 
one-sixth  of  the  entire  population  of  New  York  City 
and  of  Chicago  attends  the  theaters  on  any  Sunday  of 
the  year.  One  Sunday  evening,  at  the  instance  of  Miss 
Jane  Addams,  an  investigation  was  made  of  466  the- 
aters in  the  latter  city,  and  it  was  discovered  that  in 
the  majority  of  them  the  leading  theme  was  revenge; 
the  lover  following  his  rival;  the  outraged  husband 
seeking  his  wife's  betrayer;  or  the  wiping  out  by  death 
of  a  blot  on  a  hitherto  unstained  honor.  And  of  course 
these  influences  extend  to  the  children  who  are  always 
the  most  ardent  and  responsive  of  audiences.  There  is 
grave  danger  that  the  race  will  develop  a  ragtime 
disposition,  a  moving  picture  habit  and  a  comic  sup- 
plement mind. 

VII 

It  is  perhaps  too  early  to  point  to  the  specialized 
attention  which  libraries  have  given  to  the  needs  of 
young  people  as  a  distinct  contribution  to  society. 
Another  generation  must  come  before  material  evi- 
dence for  good  or  ill  becomes  apparent.  That  the 
work  is  well  worth  the  thought  bestowed,  whether 
present  methods  survive  or  are  modified,  may  not  be 
gainsaid.  The  derelicts  of  humanity  are  the  wrecks 
who  knew  no  guiding  light.  The  reformatories  and 
the  workhouses,  the  penal  institutions  generally  and 
the  charitable  ones  principally,  are  not  merely  a  bur- 
den upon  society,  but  a  reproach  for  duty  unper- 
formed. Society  is  at  last  beginning  to  realize  that  it 
is  better  to  perfect  machinery  of  production  than  to 
mend  the  imperfect  product;  that  to  dispense  charity 
may  ameliorate  individual  suffering,  but  does  not  pre- 
vent recurrence.  And  so  more  attention  is  being 
given  prevention  than  cure. 


50  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

"I  gave  a  beggar  from  my  little  store 
Of  well-earned  gold.     He  spent  the  shining  ore 
And  came  again,  and  yet  again,  still  cold 
And  hungry  as  before. 

I  gave  a  thought,  and  through  that  thought  of  mine, 
He  found  himself  a  man,  supreme,  divine, 
Bold,  clothed,  and  crowned  with  blessings  manifold, 
And  now  he  begs  no  more." 


VIII 

If  numbers  and  social  and  industrial  importance 
warrant  special  library  facilities  for  children,  cer- 
tainly the  same  reasons  underlie  the  special  library 
work  with  foreigners  which  has  within  recent  years 
been  carried  on  extensively  in  the  larger  cities.  Last 
month  the  census  bureau  issued  an  abstract  of  startling 
import  to  those  who  view  in  the  coming  of  vast  num- 
bers from  across  the  waters  a  menace  to  the  institu- 
tions of  this  democracy.  According  to  this  official 
enumeration,  in  but  fourteen  of  fifty  cities  having  over 
100,000  inhabitants  in  1910  did  native  whites  of  native 
parentage  contribute  as  much  as  one-half  the  total 
population.  The  proportion  exceeded  three-fifths  in 
only  four  cities.  On  the  other  hand,  in  twenty-two 
cities  of  this  class,  of  which  fifteen  are  in  New  Eng- 
land and  the  Middle  Atlantic  divisions,  less  than  one- 
third  of  the  population  were  native  whites  of  native 
parentage,  over  two-thirds  in  all  but  one  of  these  cities 
consisting  of  foreign-born  whites  and  their  children. 

In  his  Ode  delivered  at  Harvard,  Lowell  elo- 
quently referred  to 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        51 

"The  pith  and  marrow  of  a  Nation 
Drawing  force  from  all  her  men, 
Highest,  humblest,  weakest,  all, 
For  her  time  of  need,  and  then 
Pulsing  it  again  through  them, 
She  that  lifts  up  the  manhood  of  the  poor, 
She  of  the  open  soul  and  open  door, 
With  room  about  her  hearth  for  all  mankind !" 

This  was  written  in  186.5.  Since  then  the  rim  of 
the  Mediterranean  has  sent  its  enormous  contribution 
of  unskilled  and  unlettered  human  beings  to  the  New 
World.  There  have  been  three  great  tides  of  migra- 
tion from  overseas.  The  first  came  to  secure  liberty 
of  conscience;  the  second  sought  liberty  of  political 
thought  and  action;  the  third  came  in  quest  of  bread. 
And  of  the  three,  incomparably  the  greater  problem 
of  assimilation  is  that  presented  by  the  last  comers. 
Inextricably  interwoven  are  all  the  complexities  which 
face  the  great  and  growing  municipalities,  politically 
and  industrially  and  socially.  These  are  the  awful 
problems  of  congestion  and  festering  slums,  of  corrup- 
tion in  public  life,  of  the  exploitation  of  womanhood, 
of  terrible  struggle  with  wretchedness  and  poverty. 
Rightly  directed,  the  native  qualities  and  strength  of 
these  peoples  will  bring  a  splendid  contribution  in  the 
making  of  a  virile  citizenship.  Wrongly  shaped,  their 
course  in  the  life  of  the  city  may  readily  become  of 
sinister  import.  Frequently  they  are  misunderstood, 
and  they  easily  misunderstand.  The  problem  is  one 
of  education,  but  it  is  that  most  difficult  problem,  of 
education  for  grown-ups.  Here  perhaps  the  library 
may  render  the  most  distinct  service,  in  that  it  can 
bring  to  them  in  their  own  tongues  the  ideals  and  the 
underlying  principles  of  life  and  custom  in  their 
adopted  country;  and  through  their  children,  as  they 
swarm  into  the  children's  rooms,  is  established  a  point 


52  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

of  contact  which  no  other  agency  could  so  effectually 
provide. 

Under  the  repressive  measures  of  old-world  gov- 
ernments, the  racial  culture  and  national  spirit  of 
Poles,  Lithuanians,  Finns,  Balkan  Slavs,  and  Russian 
Jews  have  been  stunted.  Here  both  are  warmed  into 
life  and  renewed  vigor,  and  in  generous  measure  are 
given  back  to  the  land  of  their  adoption.  Such  racial 
contribution  must  prove  of  enormous  value,  whether, 
as  many  sociologists  believe,  this  country  is  to  prove  a 
great  melting  pot  for  the  fusing  of  many  races,  or 
whether  as  Dr.  Zhitlowsky  contends,  there  is  to  be  one 
country,  one  set  of  laws,  one  speech,  but  a  vast  variety 
of  national  cultures,  contributing  each  its  due  share 
to  the  enrichment  of  the  common  stock. 

IX 

Great  changes  have  come  about  in  the  methods 
that  obtain  for  the  exercise  of  popular  government. 
In  a  democracy  whose  chief  strength  is  derived  from 
an  intelligent  public  opinion,  the  sharpening  of  such 
intelligence  and  enlargement  of  general  knowledge 
concerning  affairs  of  common  concern  are  of  para- 
mount importance.  Statute  books  are  heavily  cum- 
bered with  laws  that  are  unenforced  because  public 
opinion  goes  counter  to  them.  Nonenforcement  breeds 
disrespect  for  law,  and  unscientific  making  of  laws 
leads  to  their  disregard.  So  the  earliest  attempts  to 
find  a  remedy  contemplated  merely  the  legislator  and 
the  official,  bringing  together  for  their  use  through  the 
combined  services  of  trained  economists  and  of  expert 
reference  librarians  the  principles  and  foundation  for 
contemplated  legislation  and  the  data  as  to  similar 
attempts  elsewhere.  Fruitful  as  this  service  has  proved 
within  the  limitation  of  state  and  municipal  official- 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        53 

dom,  a  broadened  conception  of  possibilities  now  en- 
larges the  scope  of  the  work  to  include  citizen  organi- 
zations interested  in  the  study  of  public  questions, 
students  of  sociology,  economics  and  political  science, 
business  men  keenly  alive  to  the  intimate  association— 
in  a  legitimate  sense — of  business  and  politics,  and 
that  new  and  powerful  element  in  public  affairs  which 
has  added  three  million  voters  to  the  poll  lists  in  ten 
states,  and  will  soon  add  eleven  million  voters  more  in 
the  remaining  thirty-eight.  The  new  library  service 
centering  in  state  and  municipal  legislative  reference 
libraries,  and  in  civic  departments  of  large  public 
libraries,  forecasts  the  era,  now  rapidly  approaching, 
when  aldermen  and  state  representatives  will  still  enact 
laws  and  state  and  city  officials  will  enforce  them,  but 
their  making  will  be  determined  strictly  by  public  opin- 
ion. The  local  government  of  the  future  will  be  by 
quasi-public  citizen  organizations  directing  aldermen 
and  state  legislators  accurately  to  register  their  will. 
When  representative  government  becomes  misrepre- 
sentative,  in  the  words  of  a  modern  humorist,  democ- 
racy will  ask  the  Powers  that  Be  whether  they  are  the 
Powers  that  Ought  to  Be.  To  intelligently  determine 
the  answer,  public  opinion  must  not  ignorantly  ask. 

X 

This  has  been  called  the  age  of  utilitarianism. 
Such  it  unquestionably  is,  but  its  practicality  is  not 
disassociated  from  idealism.  The  resources  of  num- 
berless commercial  enterprises  are  each  in  this  day 
reckoned  in  millions,  and  their  products  are  figured 
in  terms  of  many  millions  more,  as  once  thousands 
represented  the  spread  of  even  the  greatest  of  indus- 
tries. But  more  and  more  business  men  are  coming 
to  realize  that  business  organization  as  it  affects  for 


54  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

weal  or  woe  thousands  who  contribute  to  their  success, 
must  be  conducted  as  a  trust  for  the  common  good, 
and  not  merely  for  selfish  exploitation,  or  for  oppres- 
sion. As  the  trade  guilds  of  old  wielded  their  vast 
power  for  common  ends,  so  all  the  workers  gave  the 
best  at  their  command  to  make  their  articles  of  mer- 
chandise the  most  perfect  that  human  skill  and  care 
could  produce.  Men  of  business  whose  executive  skill 
determines  the  destinies  of  thousands  in  their  employ, 
are  growing  more  and  more  to  an  appreciation  of  the 
trusteeship  that  is  theirs.  A  humane  spirit  is  entering 
the  relationship  between  employer  and  employed. 
Great  commercial  organizations  are  conducting  elabor- 
ate investigations  into  conditions  of  housing,  sanitation, 
prolongation  of  school  life,  social  insurance  and  sim- 
ilar subjects  of  betterment  for  the  toilers;  but  a  brief 
span  ago  they  were  concerned  chiefly  with  trade  exten- 
sion and  lowering  of  wages,  all  unconcerned  about  the 
living  conditions  of  their  dependents.  They  too  are 
now  exemplifying  the  possession  of  that  constructive 
imagination  which  builds  large  and  beyond  the  pres- 
ent For  results  that  grow  out  of  experience  and  of 
experiment  they  also  are  in  part  dependent  upon  the 
sifted  facts  that  are  found  in  print.  The  business 
house  library  is  a  recent  development,  and  in  minister- 
ing in  different  ways  to  both  employer  and  employed, 
gives  promise  of  widespread  usefulness. 

XI 

With  the  tremendous  recent  growth  of  industrial- 
ism and  the  rapid  multiplication  of  invention,  the 
manifest  need  for  making  available  the  vast  sum  of 
gathered  knowledge  concerning  the  discoveries  of 
modern  science  has  evolved  the  great  special  libraries 
devoted  to  the  varied  subdivisions  of  the  subject.  Mu- 


WORLD  OF  PRINT  AND  WORLD'S  WORK        55 

nificently  endowed  as  many  of  them  are,  highly  organ- 
ized for  ready  access  to  material,  administered  to  en- 
courage use  and  to  give  expert  aid  as  well,  their  great 
importance  cannot  be  overestimated.  What  they  ac- 
complish is  not  wholly  reducible  to  statistics,  nor  can 
their  influence  be  readily  traced,  perhaps,  to  the  great 
undertakings  of  today  which  overshadow  the  seven 
wonders  of  antiquity.  But  there  can  be  no  question 
that  without  the  opportunities  that  here  lie  for  study 
and  research,  and — no  less  important — without  the 
skilled  assistance  freely  rendered  by  librarian  and 
bibliographer,  special  talent  would  often  remain  dor- 
mant and  its  possessor  unsatisfied.  Greater  here  would 
be  the  loss  to  society  than  to  the  individual. 

XII 

Thus  the  libraries  are  endeavoring  to  make  them- 
selves useful  in  every  field  of  human  enterprise  or 
interest;  with  books  of  facts  for  the  information  they 
possess;  with  books  of  inspiration  for  the  stimulus 
they  give  and  the  power  they  generate.  Conjointly 
these  yield  the  equipment  which  develops  the  con- 
structive imagination,  without  which  the  world  would 
seem  but  a  sorry  and  a  shriveled  spot  to  dwell  upon. 
The  poet  and  the  dreamer  conceive  the  great  things 
which  are  wrought;  the  scientist  and  the  craftsman 
achieve  them;  the  scholar  and  the  artist  interpret  them. 
Thus  associated,  they  make  their  finest  contribution 
to  the  common  life.  The  builders  construct  the  great 
monuments  of  iron  and  of  concrete  which  are  the 
expression  of  this  age,  as  the  great  cathedrals  and 
abbeys  were  of  generations  that  have  passed.  Adapted 
as  they  are  to  the  needs  of  this  day,  our  artists  and 
our  writers  have  shown  us  the  beauty  and  the  art  which 
the  modern  handiwork  of  man  possesses.  With  etcher's 


56  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

tool  one  man  of  keen  insight  has  shown  us  the  art  that 
inheres  in  the  lofty  structures  which  line  the  great 
thoroughfares  of  our  chief  cities,  the  beauty  of  the 
skylines  they  trace  with  roof  and  pediment.  With 
burning  words  another  has  given  voice  to  machinery 
and  to  the  vehicles  of  modern  industry,  and  we  thrill 
to  the  eloquence  and  glow  of  his  poetic  fervor. 

"Great  works  of  art  are  useful  works  greatly  done," 
declares  Dr.  T.  J.  Cobden-Sanderson,  and,  rightly 
viewed,  the  most  prosaic  achievements  of  this  age, 
whether  they  be  great  canals  or  clusters  of  workmen's 
homes  worthily  built,  or  maybe  more  humble  projects, 
have  a  greatness  of  meaning  that  carries  with  it  the 
sense  of  beauty  and  of  art. 

In  medieval  days,  the  heralds  of  civilization  were 
the  warrior,  the  missionary,  the  explorer  and  the 
troubadour;  in  modern  times,  civilization  is  carried 
forward  by  the  chemist,  the  engineer,  the  captain  of 
industry,  and  the  interpreter  of  life — whether  the 
medium  utilized  be  pen  or  brush  or  voice.  Without 
vision,  civilization  would  wither  and  perish,  and  so  it 
may  well  be  that  the  printed  page  shall  serve  as  symbol 
of  its  supreme  vision.  Within  the  compass  of  the  book 
sincerely  written,  rightly  chosen,  and  well  used  are 
contained  the  three  chief  elements  which  justify  the 
library  of  the  people — information,  education,  recre- 
ation. 

The  urge  of  the  world  makes  these  demands ;  ours 
is  the  high  privilege  to  respond. 


LIBRARY  WORK  WITH  CHILDREN1 


T  IS  amid  conditions  that  call  for  heroic 
effort  that  the  public  library  of  today  must 
do  its  work  with  children.  There  are  not 
wanting  critics  who  decry  some  present- 
day  tendencies.  They  saw  that  when  librar- 
ians seek  the  children  in  their  homes  to  form  groups 
of  readers,  they  encroach  upon  the  domain  of  the 
settlement  worker.  They  complain  that  the  story  hour, 
now  so  widely  developed,  is  an  invasion  of  the  kinder- 
garten ;  they  view  with  alarm  the  use  of  the  stereo- 
scope and  stereopticon  as  being  outside  the  legitimate 
domain  of  the  institution.  Perhaps  they  are  right, 
and  perhaps  they  are  wrong;  maybe  they  are  both 
right  and  wrong.  If  the  purposes  sought  by  these 
means  were  adequately  ministered  to  from  other 
sources,  it  may  well  be  questioned  whether  the  library 
would  be  justified  in  adopting  these  methods.  In 
the  admitted  lack  of  agencies  to  meet  these  conditions, 
the  children's  librarian  may  find  satisfaction  in  the 
results  obtained,  even  if  some  folks'  notions  of  legiti- 
mate library  work  are  sadly  jolted,  as  in  the  time  to 
come  they  will  certainly  have  to  be  modified.  At  best, 
the  library  and  all  allied  agencies  are  struggling 
against  tremendous  odds  in  counteracting  subtle  influ- 
ences for  evil  and  open  influences  that  breed  coarse- 
ness and  vulgarity.  To  operate  a  moving-picture 

Extracts  from  a  paper  in  the  Educational  Bi-monthly,  April,  1910,  entitled, 
"The  Chicago  Public  Library  and  Co-operation  with  the  Schools." 


58  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

show  within  the  sacred  precincts  of  a  library  may  be 
counter  to  the  accepted  view  of  the  fitness  of  things, 
but  those  who  have  visited  the  children's  department 
of  the  Cincinnati  Public  Library  will  recall  with  a 
glow  of  pleasure  the  sight  of  the  interested  group  of 
children  awaiting  each  his  turn  at  the  machine  to  go 
on  a  tarry-at-home  journey  to  Switzerland  and  France 
and  other  countries  over-sea.  Would  the  critics  prefer 
to  have  the  children  glue  their  faces  to  the  glass  in  the 
vulgar  and  suggestive  shows  of  the  penny  arcade? 
The  craving  for  novelty  and  amusement  will  not  be 
denied.  The  instinct  for  dramatic  action  is  inherent. 
It  is  said  that  there  are  5,000  penny  arcades  and  nickel- 
odeons in  New  York  City  alone,  with  an  average  daily 
attendance  of  300,000  children,  and  scarce  a  hamlet 
in  all  this  wide  country  that  does  not  foster  one  or 
two  of  them,  a  large  proportion  of  them  supplied  with 
pictures  of  doubtful  propriety. 

The  average  penny  arcade  is  closely  linked  with 
the  Sunday  comic  supplement  and  the  yellow-backed 
pamphlet  in  the  vulgarization  and  decadence  that 
threatens  to  overwhelm  the  youth  of  the  country. 
Parents  who  would  be  horrified  to  note  in  the  hands 
of  their  children  any  specimen  of  dime  novel  litera- 
ture, complacently  turn  over  to  them  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing the  sheet  splashed  with  daubs  of  red  and  yellow 
and  green  that  serve  to  render  attractive  the  accom- 
panying pictures  and  their  slangy  explanations.  The 
Sunday  comic  supplement  has  done  more  to  debase 
and  to  brutalize  what  is  fine  in  boys  and  girls,  to  de- 
bauch their  sense  of  fairness,  to  blunt  their  ideas  as  to 
what  is  manly  and  fair,  to  deaden  their  respect  for 
age  and  authority,  to  prevent  such  aesthetic  sense  as 
they  may  have  had,  than  can  be  counteracted  by  all  the 
attempts  being  made  by  school,  church,  museum  and 


LIBRARY  WORK  WITH  CHILDREN  59 

library  to  stimulate  a  taste  for  better  things.  There  is 
no  escape  from  these  colored  atrocities.  Millions  enter 
the  households  weekly,  they  are  scattered  broadcast  in 
parks  and  on  the  streets,  they  are  left  upon  the  seats 
of  railway  trains  and  street  cars — they  are  every- 
where. Parental  effort  is  powerless.  In  a  few  house- 
holds they  are  ruthlessly  barred,  but  the  neighbors' 
children  are  willing  to  share  without  demur.  In  an 
address  before  the  American  Playgrounds  Congress, 
recently  held  in  New  York  City,  Miss  Maud  Sum- 
mers uttered  a  warning  against  this  pernicious  foster- 
ing of  deceit,  cunning,  and  disrespect  for  age. 

"The  child  of  sensible  parents  will  not  see  or 
know  about  them,"  Mr.  Lindsay  Swift  wrote  in  a 
contribution  to  The  Printing  Art  two  years  ago,  "but 
the  child  of  the  street,  the  child  of  the  indifferent 
household,  will  warm  to  them  like  a  cat  to  the  back 
of  the  stove.  There  are  certain  negative  results  that 
parents  have  a  right  to  expect  from  every  educative 
force  which  is  brought  to  bear  on  their  children;  that 
these  children  shall  not  be  deliberately  taught  dis- 
respect for  old  age  or  for  physical  infirmities  and 
deformities;  that  they  shall  not  learn  to  cherish  con- 
tempt for  other  races  or  religions  than  their  own;  that 
they  shall  not  take  satisfaction  in  the  tormenting  of 
animals  or  weaklings — in  short,  that  they  shall  not 
acquire  an  habitually  cynical  and  unsportsmanlike 
attitude  of  mind.  A  morbid  gloating  over  the  defi- 
ciencies and  humiliations  of  our  neighbors  is  pretty 
sure  to  develop  vulgarity  and  a  lax  moral  fibre  in 
ourselves;  for  vulgarity  of  mind  and  manners  seems  to 
me  to  be  primarily  a  lack  of  restraint  in  thought,  feel- 
ing, and  expression  regarding  those  tendencies  which 
every  civilized  man  and  race  is  striving  to  modify  or 
to  conquer." 


60  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

Doubtless,  when  first  this  medium  for  purveying 
humor  was  devised,  the  tendencies  now  so  apparent 
were  minimized.  There  were,  in  some  of  the  earlier 
attempts,  real  humor  and  some  skill  of  pencil,  but  the 
pictures  have  degenerated  until  they  cry  aloud  for 
suppression. 

There  need  be  no  apology  for  the  story  hour.  A 
good  story  well  told  makes  for  pleasure,  makes  for 
morals,  makes  for  intellectual  growth.  Most  librari- 
ans defend  it  on  the  ground  that  the  telling  of  the 
story  leads  to  the  reading  of  books  on  related  topics. 
To  my  mind,  no  such  defense  or  even  explanation  is 
needed.  The  story,  if  well  chosen  and  fittingly  told, 
justifies  the  teller  and  the  tale.  It  is  a  moot  question 
in  educational  circles  whether  the  ear  is  a  better 
medium  for  receiving  impressions  than  is  the  eye. 
Some  school-masters  aver  that  there  are  ear-minded 
children  and  there  are  eye-minded  children.  A  good 
story,  well  told,  is  worthy  of  being  counted  in  the  cir- 
culation statistics  as  many  times  as  there  are  children 
to  hear  it,  and  far  worthier  to  so  figure  than  many  a 
book  that  is  taken  out  on  a  card  and  leaves  as  faint  and 
as  durable  an  impression  on  the  reader's  mind  as  foot- 
steps on  the  shifting  sand.  And  the  more  the  story- 
teller can  lead  back  the  mind  of  childhood  to  the 
heart  of  childhood,  the  tales  of  wonder  and  of  myth 
that  grew  to  fulness  when  the  race  was  young,  the 
greater  the  service  and  the  more  fruitful  in  giving  the 
listener  something  that  will  endure. 

Neither  is  there  need  for  apology  in  the  exploita- 
tion of  home  library  groups.  A.t  best,  these  can  but 
partially  counteract  the  flood  of  cheap  and  decadent 
literature  of  the  most  depraved  character  that  circu- 
lates secretly  among  boys  and  girls.  In  Buffalo,  re- 
cently, the  public  library  has  found  among  the  people 


LIBRARY  WORK  WITH  CHILDREN  61 

of  foreign  birth  a  mass  of  material  in  circulation 
whose  bad  quality  has  surprised  even  the  librarians. 
The  home  groups  that  are  being  formed  in  some  of 
the  larger  cities  find  an  opening  wedge  among  people 
of  foreign  birth  whose  reading  has  been  practically 
confined  to  stuff  of  this  sort.  The  reports  from  Ger- 
many would  hardly  seem  credible  were  they  not 
vouched  for  by  the  Durer  Union,  whose  campaign 
against  the  growing  tendency  to  read  trashy  literature 
has  unearthed  these  facts.  In  a  statement  issued  by  its 
secretary,  the  astounding  declaration  is  made  that 
8,000  established  booksellers  and  30,000  peddlers  were 
engaged  in  selling  sensational  serials  and  books  con- 
taining complete  tales  of  a  very  low  order. 

No  fewer  than  750,000  of  these  wretched  stories 
have  been  sold  in  the  course  of  a  single  year.  They 
are  hawked  from  house  to  house,  from  factory  to 
factory,  outside  schools,  and  among  the  peasants  on 
every  farm  throughout  the  empire.  The  peddlers 
nearly  always  enter  by  the  back  door  or  the  kitchen 
stairs.  Servant  girls  and  ignorant  peasantry  are  the 
most  fruitful  customers,  but  it  is  asserted  by  municipal 
officials  that  even  people  who  are  in  receipt  of  poor 
relief  often  deprive  themselves  of  necessities  in  order 
to  save  two  cents  for  a  vile  rehash  of  the  sensationally 
embellished  details  of  a  notorious  crime. 

The  extent  of  the  literature  of  the  streets  obtainable 
in  this  country  is  little  appreciated.  An  investigation, 
instituted  several  years  ago  by  the  Library  Commission 
of  one  of  the  Middle  West  states,  demonstrated  the 
existence  of  tons  of  it  on  the  upper  and  back-row 
shelves  of  news  stands  in  all  the  larger  cities,  and  in 
many  of  the  villages  and  hamlets  as  well. 

The  desire  to  show  a  large  circulation  has  made 
many  librarians  yield  to  the  tyranny  of  statistics,  and 


62  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

some  errors  of  library  administration  are  attributable 
to  this  cause.  While  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the 
chief  function  of  the  library  is  to  distribute  as  many 
wholesome  books  as  possible,  among  the  people,  the 
totals  of  circulation  are  of  vastly  inferior  importance 
to  some  facts  that  are  not  susceptible  of  being  arranged 
in  statistical  uniform.  And  this  is  more  particularly 
true  of  children's  reading.  It  is  less  a  question  of  how 
many  books  are  read  than  what  books  are  read  and  by 
whom  they  are  read.  It  may  well  be  urged  that  there 
is  greater  importance  in  the  quality  of  the  circulation 
than  in  the  size  of  it — not  how  many,  but  how  good, 
should  be  the  earnest  inquiry.  It  may  well  de  doubted 
whether  some  children  do  not  read  more  books  than 
they  can  well  assimilate.  They  are  mentally  profited 
about  as  much  as  their  physical  condition  is  nourished 
when  they  quaff  quantities  of  soda  water.  They  be- 
come troubled  with  mental  dyspepsia. 

Another  criticism  that  is  pertinent  applies  to  book 
selection.  There  are  too  many  books  written  espe- 
cially for  children.  There  are  more  titles  in  the  aver- 
age collection  of  children's  books  than  the  librarian 
ought  to  purchase.  There  are  too  many  books  that 
are  negative  in  quality — pleasantly  enough  flavored, 
not  harmful  in  tone,  authentic  as  to  facts,  but  color- 
less. There  are  usually  too  few  of  the  world's  endur- 
ing books — classics — and  too  many  editions  edited 
especially  for  children.  Some  of  the  children's  cata- 
logues are  of  appalling  size.  Here  there  is  abundant 
need  of  excision.  Five  hundred  titles,  judiciously 
chosen  and  plentifully  duplicated,  would  meet  the 
need  of  most  libraries,  and  would  immeasurably  raise 
the  standard  of  reading.  Much  might  be  ascertained 
by  an  analysis  of  the  individual  cards  of  juvenile 
patrons — a  sort  of  laboratory  experiment. 


LIBRARY  WORK  WITH  CHILDREN  63 

There  is  need  for  greater  co-operation  between 
teachers  and  librarians.  There  are  tendencies  in  teach- 
ing that  are  strangling  rather  than  imparting  the  love 
of  fine  literature.  It  is  no  longer  sufficient  to  give  to 
the  reader  the  music  of  lyric,  the  stir  of  epic — poetry 
must  serve  as  an  exercise  in  grammar.  It  is  not  suffi- 
cient that  from  virile  prose  the  reader  may  obtain  the 
glow  of  the  writer's  fancy  or  thought — it  must  do  duty 
as  a  bit  of  sentence  construction,  or  a  companion  piece 
to  a  lesson  in  geography  or,  perhaps,  of  history.  We 
are  told  that  poetry  is  dead.  Who  killed  it?  and  how 
long  would  it  take  to  do  the  like  for  prose? 

Whatever  of  criticism  as  to  plan  and  method  may 
be  rightfully  made  against  public  library  work  with 
children,  the  earnestness  that  underlies  it  all  will,  in 
the  end,  serve  to  eliminate  the  real  causes  for  such 
criticism.  Its  meaning  will  unfold  as  time  goes  on— 
the  first  children's  room  opened  in  a  public  library 
dates  back  not  much  more  than  a  dozen  years.  In  the 
almonry  of  Westminster,  three  and  one-half  centuries 
ago,  William  Caxton  chose  carefully  for  his  printing 
press,  with  deep  reverence  in  his  heart  for  the  white 
souls  upon  which  his  characters  would  be  printed  as 
surely  as  upon  the  white  paper  before  him.  And  with 
that  same  thought  and  care  will  be  sifted,  in  the  work 
that  is  being  carried  on  now,  the  printed  page  that 
helps  to  mould  and  build  the  character  of  the  newer 
generations. 


TRAVELLING  LIBRARIES1 


OLLOWING  in  the  wake  of  the  great  pub- 
lic library  movement,  which  in  less  than 
two  decades  has  dotted  the  cities  of  the 
United  States  with  buildings  that  house 
millions  of  books  for  the  people,  came 
systems  of  traveling  libraries.  The  institutions  which 
Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones  satirically  terms  Carnegeries,  pro- 
vide city  dwellers  with  an  amplitude  of  reading  ma- 
terial, but  there  was  until  a  few  years  ago  no  provision 
for  similarly  meeting  the  greater  needs  of  the  isolated 
persons  living  remote  from  centers  of  population — in 
thousands  of  little  hamlets,  in  mining  and  lumber 
camps,  in  uncounted  farmhouses. 

Just  fifteen  years  ago,  Mr.  Melvil  Dewey,  then 
state  librarian  of  New  York,  ever  foremost  in  pro- 
gressive library  work  and  originator  of  most  of  the 
far-reaching  methods  for  making  public  libraries  use- 
ful and  efficient,  solved  the  problem  which  had  both- 
ered many  thinkers  on  the  subject:  How  to  give 
country  people  access  to  collections  of  books  selected 
by  experienced  and  educated  buyers,  and  how  to  renew 
these  collections  so  as  to  keep  a  fresh  and  plentiful 
supply  on  hand  at  all  times.  Mr.  Dewey's  solution  of 
the  problem  was  absurdly  simple.  Anybody  could 
have  thought  it  out  without  effort — but  nobody  else 
did.  It  was  this:  From  a  centrally  administered 

^Extracts  from  booklet,  "Books  for  the  People,"  1908. 


65 

library,  groups  of  books  carefully  selected  so  as  to 
comprise  fifty  or  sixty  volumes  each,  were  packed  into 
suitable  boxes  or  cases,  and  sent  to  small  villages,  coun- 
try schoolhouses,  and  centrally  located  farmhouses,  to 
be  distributed  to  the  neighborhoods  on  the  same  plan 
as  books  are  given  out  from  branch  stations  in  cities! 
At  the  end  of  six  months,  the  books  would  be  gathered 
by  the  custodian,  shipped  back  to  the  central  distribut- 
ing agency,  and  a  fresh  lot  would  take  their  place. 
By  this  simple  and  economical  method  the  people  of 
these  little  neighborhoods  would  secure  an  opportunity 
to  read  the  best  and  most  interesting  books  without 
financial  burden. 

"In  the  work  of  popular  education,"  said  Melvil 
Dewey  pertinently,  "it  is,  after  all,  not  the  few  great 
libraries,  but  the  thousand  small  that  may  do  most  for 
the  people." 

In  fifteen  years,  the  first  little  chest  of  books  that 
went  upon  its  travels  has  multiplied  to  more  than 
5,000.  Probably  a  third  of  a  million  books  are  now 
constantly  "on  the  go"  in  this  fashion.  Figures  are 
available  for  only  twenty-two  of  the  states,  and  accord- 
ing to  these  the  circulation  for  the  states  enumerated 
was  600,443  books  last  year.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  for  a  few  years  after  the  plan  was  transplanted 
from  New  York  to  other  states,  private  contributions 
were  the  only  reliance  for  maintaining  the  systems  of 
traveling  libraries.  It  is  only  within  the  last  half 
dozen  years  that  the  demonstration  of  their  usefulness 
prompted  state  legislatures  to  make  appropriations  for 
this  purpose,  to  enable  state  library  commissions  to 
extend  this  great  work  on  a  liberal  scale.  The  ease 
with  which  the  traveling  libraries  may  be  adapted  to 
meet  various  needs  may  be  shown  in  a  rapid  summary 
compiled  by  Mr.  F.  A.  Hutchins,  who  has  been  one 
of  the  leading  promoters  of  them  in  this  state. 


66  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

Some  women  in  New  Jersey  have  used  them  to 
lighten  the  long  winter  days  and  evenings  of  the  brave 
men  who  belong  to  the  life-saving  service,  and  that 
state  has  now  taken  up  the  traveling  library  as  a  defi- 
nite part  of  the  work  of  its  state  library;  other  women, 
in  Salt  Lake  City,  send  them  regularly  to  remote  val- 
leys in  Utah ;  a  number  of  state  federations  of  women's 
clubs  use  them  to  furnish  books  for  study  to  isolated 
clubs;  Mrs.  Eugene  B.  Heard  of  Middleton,  Ga.,  is 
devoting  herself  to  the  supervision  of  an  admirable 
system  which  reaches  a  large  number  of  small  villages 
on  the  Seaboard  Air  Line  in  five  southern  states;  an 
association  in  Washington,  D.  C.,  puts  libraries  on  the 
canal-boats  which  ply  on  the  Washington  and  Potomac 
Canal  in  the  summer  and  "tie-up"  in  small  hamlets 
in  the  Blue  Ridge  Mountains  in  the  winter;  the  col- 
ored graduates  of  Hampton  Institute  carry  libraries 
to  the  schools  for  their  own  people  at  the  base  of  the 
Cumberland  Mountains,  while  to  the  "mountain 
whites"  libraries  are  sent  by  women's  clubs  in  Ken- 
tucky, Tennessee,  and  Alabama.  In  Idaho,  California, 
Nebraska,  Kansas,  Illinois,  Missouri,  Minnesota,  and 
many  other  states,  women's  clubs  are  doing  the  same 
work  for  miners,  lumbermen,  farmers,  and  sailors. 
The  people  of  British  Columbia  and  New  Zealand 
are  successfully  imitating  their  American  cousins  in 
this  work.  In  Massachusetts,  where  nearly  every  com- 
munity has  its  public  library,  the  Woman's  Educa- 
tional Association  is  doing  a  most  helpful  work  by 
using  traveling  libraries  to  strengthen  the  weak  public 
libraries  in  the  hill  towns. 

Of  all  the  states  of  the  Union  which  reported  on 
traveling  libraries  last  year,  Wisconsin  stood  first  with 
a  circulation  of  122,093.  Wisconsin  was  the  third 


TRAVELING  LIBRARIES  67 

state  to  adopt  this  method  for  bringing  wholesome 
books  to  people  in  the  country.  This  was  in  1895.  The 
Free  Library  Commission  has  charge  of  563  of  these 
little  libraries,  which  are  sent  to  stations  scattered  all 
over  the  state  and  are  exchanged  every  six  months.  Each 
group  contains  books  of  history,  travel,  fiction,  biog- 
raphy, useful  arts,  and  miscellaneous  literature  so  pro- 
portioned as  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  average  com- 
munity as  determined  by  experience.  The  Wisconsin 
Commission  also  sends  to  communities  where  there  are 
many  persons  of  foreign  birth,  the  best  literature  in 
their  own  tongues.  In  some  sections  of  the  state,  peo- 
ple go  ten  to  twenty  miles  at  regular  intervals  to  secure 
these  books.  The  Commission  also  makes  up  study 
libraries  for  the  use  of  clubs  engaged  in  serious  study. 
The  topics  deal  with  English  literature,  art,  history, 
village  and  town  improvement,  questions  of  the  day, 
etc. 

II 

Fifteen  years  ago  there  existed  within  the  fifty-six 
thousand  square  miles  of  Wisconsin  a  mere  handful 
of  starveling  public  libraries,  and  only  in  three  or  four 
of  the  larger  cities  were  these  institutions  properly 
housed.  Most  of  them  existed  from  force  of  habit 
rather  than  from  action.  But  one  library  in  the  state 
employed  trained  service.  There  were  no  traveling 
libraries.  The  school  district  libraries  had  scarcely 
made  a  beginning,  so  that  even  that  source  failed  to 
supply  wholesome  books  for  the  use  of  the  people. 
Here  and  there  a  volunteer  fire  department  gathered  a 
bundle  of  books,  or  a  literary  society  would  secure  a 
similar  collection  from  the  attics  of  its  members. 
Naturally,  such  efforts  resulted  in  dismal  failures. 
Ninety  per  cent  of  the  population  was  absolutely  with- 
out public  library  facilities. 


68  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

But  fifteen  years  ago,  and  now!  Scattered  all  over 
the  state,  in  cities  and  villages  and  hamlets,  are  to  be 
found  modern,  up-to-date  public  libraries  in  charge 
of  alert,  trained,  interested  librarians,  eager  and  active 
in  extending  the  radius  of  their  influence  or  helpful 
in  every  way  to  promote  the  interests  of  the  community 
and  of  every  individual  in  it  There  are  now  152  pub- 
lic libraries  in  Wisconsin.  Sixty-one  of  them  occupy 
buildings  erected  especially  for  them,  and  28  others 
have  quarters  in  city  halls  or  other  public  buildings. 
Many  of  them  have  a  children's  department,  with 
trained  library  workers  in  charge  of  the  specialized 
activities  there  conducted.  In  the  larger  buildings, 
lecture  halls  are  an  adjunct,  where  it  is  possible  to 
provide  university  extension  and  similar  lectures,  and 
where  women's  study  clubs,  young  men's  debating 
societies  and  similar  groups  of  persons  find  hospitable 
meeting  places  for  carrying  on  their  work.  Work 
with  schools  is  carried  on  to  an  extent,  and  to  a  profit- 
able degree,  little  imagined  as  possible  in  the  early 
days  of  the  library  extension  movement.  Free  access 
to  shelves  is  now  permitted  in  every  library  of  the 
state  except  one. 

There  are  now  some  forty  librarians  in  Wisconsin 
who  come  from  library  training  schools,  and  of  the 
other  librarians  and  assistants  employed,  approxi- 
mately 100  have  attended  the  summer  school  con- 
ducted by  the  Wisconsin  Free  Library  Commission. 
The  growing  importance  of  the  relation  between 
library  and  school  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  library 
instruction  is  now  part  of  the  course  in  every  one  of 
the  seven  normal  schools,  and  a  professional  school  for 
training  librarians,  with  a  staff  of  picked  instructors, 
is  maintained  at  Madison  by  the  state.  The  candi- 
dates for  admission  are  selected  by  competitive  exam- 


TRAVELING  LIBRARIES  69 

ination,  and  with  special  regard  to  suitability  for  the 
work  by  reason  of  temperament,  education,  address 
and  experience. 

Ill 

Naturally,  the  activity  of  the  public  library  move- 
ment in  recent  years,  with  consequent  multiplication 
of  institutions,  has  attracted  the  attention  of  thoughful 
men  and  enlisted  the  cordial  aid  of  public-spirited  indi- 
viduals. Philanthropists  have  found  therein  an  ave- 
nue for  their  benefactions  yielding  undoubted  results. 
Many  wealthy  men,  instead  of  rearing  to  their  own 
honor  shafts  of  stone  or  images  in  bronze,  have  taken 
the  wiser  and  happier  method  of  securing  an  enduring 
monument  in  the  form  of  a  public  library.  There  are 
now  living  a  number  of  wealthy  men  who  have  pro- 
vided in  their  wills  for  suitable  bequests  whereby 
buildings  of  this  character  may  be  erected  in  the  places 
which  they  make  their  home,  and  similarly  others  have 
provided  endowments  for  their  home  libraries  to  come 
out  of  their  estates.  Thus  does  one  good  deed  suggest 
another. 

IV 

The  work  of  the  Free  Library  Commission  may 
be  briefly  summarized  as  follows: 

Supervision.  Works  for  the  establishment  of  public  libraries  in 
localities  able  to  support  them. 

Visits  libraries  for  the  purpose  of  giving  advice  and  instruction. 

Collects  and  publishes  statistics  of  libraries  for  the  guidance  and 
information  of  trustees. 

Prints  a  bi-monthly  bulletin,  news  notes  and  suggestions  to  keep 
librarians  and  trustees  informed  in  regard  to  library  progress  through- 
out the  state. 

Gives  advice  and  assistance  in  planning  library  buildings  and  col- 
lects material  on  this  subject  for  the  use  of  library  boards. 

Instruction.     Aids  in  organizing  new  libraries. 


70  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

Assists  in  reorganizing  old  libraries  according  to  modern  methods 
which  insure  the  best  results  and  greatest  efficiency  of  the  library. 

Conducts  a  school  for  library  training  for  the  purpose  of  improv- 
ing the  service  in  small  libraries. 

Holds  institutes  for  librarians  to  instruct  those  who  cannot  attend 
summer  school. 

Traveling  Libraries.  Maintains  a  system  of  traveling  libraries 
which  furnishes  books  to  rural  communities  and  villages  too  small  to 
support  local  libraries,  and  to  larger  villages  and  towns  as  an  induce- 
ment to  establish  free  public  libraries. 

Aids  in  organization  and  administration  of  county  traveling  library 
systems. 

Clearing  House.  Operates  a  clearing  house  for  magazines  to  build 
up  reference  collections  of  bound  periodicals  in  the  public  libraries  of 
the  state. 

Document  Department.  Maintains  a  document  department  for 
the  use  of  state  officers,  members  of  the  legislature  and  others  inter- 
ested in  the  growth  and  development  of  affairs  in  the  state,  and 
catalogues  and  exchanges  state  documents  for  the  benefit  of  public 
libraries. 

Book  Lists.  Distributes  a  suggestive  list  of  books  for  small 
libraries  to  insure  purchase  of  the  books  in  the  best  editions. 

Issues  frequent  buying  lists  of  current  books  to  aid  committees  in 
securing  the  best  investment  of  book  funds. 

Compiles  buying  lists  on  special  subjects  or  for  special  libraries 
upon  request. 

V 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  because  the  great  library 
growth  has  been  manifested  in  the  last  decade,  that 
there  were  wanting  prior  to  that  period  interested  men 
and  women  hopeful  and  active  to  give  impulse  for  like 
conditions.  Away  back  in  1840,  when  Wisconsin  was 
a  frontier  territory  ambitious  to  advance  to  statehood, 
the  council  and  assembly  enacted  a  law  to  encourage 
subscription  libraries.  A  public  library  supported  by 
taxation  was  not  then  dreamed  of,  for  there  was  then 
none  in  the  entire  United  States,  nor  for  ten  years 
thereafter.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  these  terri- 


TRAVELING  LIBRARIES  71 

torial  days,  the  little  hamlet  of  log  houses  known  as 
Madison  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  a  library  open  to 
all  who  cared  to  use  it.  It  was  the  private  library 
of  the  governor,  James  Duane.' Doty,  which  he  threw 
open  to  the  public.  Col.  Geo.  W.  Bird,  in  his  account 
of  it,  says  that  it  contained  about  five  hundred  volumes 
of  a  general  historical,  educational  and  literary  char- 
acter and  a  number  of  the  best  maps  known  at  that 
time.  It  was  housed  in  the  governor's  private  office, 
which  was  a  small  one-story  frame  building  of  one 
room  situated  among  the  trees  in  the  little  backwoods 
town.  The  books  were  arranged  in  low  shelving 
around  the  sides  of  the  room,  and  the  scanty  furniture, 
consisting  of  a  small  desk,  a  deal-board  table,  three  or 
four  chairs,  a  pine  bench,  and  a  register  in  which  to 
enter  the  taking  and  returning  of  books,  completed  the 
equipment. 

Over  the  shelving  on  the  westerly  side  of  the  room, 
was  this  direction,  painted  in  black  on  a  white  field: 
"Take,  Read  and  Return."  There  were  only  two  regu- 
lations as  to  the  use  of  the  library  and  they  were  dis- 
played conspicuously  in  red  ink  about  the  room,  and 
they  were  as  follows : 

1.  Any  white  resident  between  the  lakes,  the  Cat- 
fish and  the  westerly  hills,  his  wife  and  children,  may 
have  the  privileges  of  this  library  so  long  as  they  do 
not  soil  or  injure  the  books,  and  properly  return  them. 

2.  Any  such  resident,  his  wife  or  children,  may 
take  from  the  library  one  book  at  a  time  and  retain 
it  not  to  exceed  two  weeks,  and  then  return  it,  and  on 
failure  to  return  promptly,  he  or  she  shall  be  consid- 
ered, and  published,  as  an  outcast  in  the  community. 

"I  do  not  remember  of  there  ever  having  been  occa- 
sion for  inflicting  this  penalty.  I  do  remember  my 
father  sending  me  one  day  when  the  time-limit  of  a 


72  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

book  was  about  to  expire,  with  a  note  to  a  family, 
requiring  the  return  of  a  book  that  day,  and  calling 
attention  pointedly  to  the  above  penalty  of  failure;  and 
I  remember  how  concerned  the  mother  was,  and  how 
quickly  she  got  the  book  and  dragging  me  along  after 
her,  speedily  returned  it  to  the  library,  and  thus  es- 
caped the  sentence  of  outlawry,"  concludes  Col.  Bird. 

VI 

What  is  known  far  and  wide  as  the  Maxon  book- 
mark originated  in  Wisconsin,  and  was  the  conception 
of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Maxon,  then  resident  in  Dunn  County. 
It  has  been  reprinted  on  little  slips  in  hundreds  of 
forms,  has  circulated  in  every  state  and  territory  in  the 
country,  and  doubtless  a  full  million  copies  of  it  have 
been  slipped  between  the  leaves  of  children's  books. 
It  may  fittingly  be  reproduced  here: 

"Once  on  a  time"  A  Library  Book  was  overheard  talking  to  a 
little  boy  who  had  just  borrowed  it.  The  words  seemed  worth  re- 
cording and  here  they  are: 

"Please  don't  handle  me  with  dirty  hands.  I  should  feel  ashamed 
to  be  seen  when  the  next  little  boy  borrowed  me. 

Or  leave  me  out  in  the  rain.  Books  can  catch  cold  as  well  as 
children. 

Or  make  marks  on  me  with  your  pen  or  pencil.  It  would  spoil  my 
looks. 

Or  lean  on  me  with  your  elbows  when  you  are  reading  me.  It 
hurts. 

Or  open  me  and  lay  me  face  down  on  the  table.  You  would 
not  like  to  be  treated  so. 

Or  put  in  between  my  leaves  a  pencil  or  anything  thicker  than  a 
single  sheet  of  thin  paper.  It  would  strain  my  back. 

Whenever  you  are  through  reading  me,  if  you  are  afraid  of  losing 
your  place,  don't  turn  down  the  corner  of  one  of  my  leaves,  but  have 
?  neat  little  Book  Mark  to  put  in  where  you  stopped,  and  then  close 
me  and  lay  me  down  on  my  side  so  that  I  can  have  a  good  comfortable 
rest." 


ADMINISTRATION    OF    LIBRARY    FUNDS1 


UST  a  few  words  on  a  matter  of  business 
addressed  to  business  men — for  that,  I  con- 
ceive, is  what  mayors  and  aldermen  pri- 
marily are,  whether  engaged  in  trade  or  in 
professions.  I  am  aware  that  it  is  more 
popular  to  term  them  politicians  in  the  worst  meaning 
of  that  abused  word,  and  to  ascribe  improper  motives 
to  their  official  actions,  but  personal  relations  with 
many  of  them  through  a  long  series  of  years  convinces 
me  that  a  very  large  majority  of  them  are  men  of 
probity  and  good  intentions,  seeking  to  perform  a 
public  duty  to  the  extent  of  their  abilities.  They  are 
sure  of  clamorous  condemnation  for  any  errors  of 
commission  or  omission,  and  very  uncertain  of  com- 
mendation for  conscientious  attention  to  official  duties. 
Lest  these  remarks  may  be  construed  as  undue  flattery 
prompted  by  the  presence  here  of  so  many  municipal 
officers,  it  may  be  added  that  the  average  alderman 
is  inclined  to  be  at  times  a  bit  self-opinionated  in  his 
views  of  public  business,  or  impatient  with  that  phase 
of  it  which  he  does  not  directly  control.  At  least  this 
is  so  until  his  term  is  nearing  its  end.  Unfortunately, 
the  broader  and  wider  outlook  which  experience 
always  brings  to  men  usually  develops  too  late,  except 
in  cases  of  re-election,  for  service  during  his  own  period 
of  administration,  and  cannot  be  transmitted  to  his  suc- 

1The  Municipality,  Dec.,  1905. 


74  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

cessor.  And  that  is  why,  rather  than  because  of  down- 
right dishonesty,  our  city  public  works  are  frequently 
defectively  constructed,  money  is  needlessly  expended 
for  certain  purposes,  and  not  expended  at  all,  or  in- 
sufficiently expended  for  others,  where  it  would  bring 
best  results. 

A  municipality  ought  to  be  a  business  corporation 
purely,  managed  on  business  principles  by  its  board 
of  trustees  (aldermen)  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  stock- 
holders (taxpayers  and  citizens).  Like  any  other 
business  institution,  its  management  should  carefully 
consider  its  resources  and  apportion  expenditures  to 
secure  largest  returns  on  investment.  And  in  the  case 
of  a  municipality,  the  returns  from  investments  embrace 
both  the  material  comforts  and  necessities  of  com- 
munity life  which  are  represented  in  sanitation,  facili- 
ties for  transportation,  for  lighting  and  for  adequate 
water  supply,  and  the  intellectual  requirements  of 
modern  life  which  find  their  expression  in  good  public 
schools  and  well-administered  libraries. 

And  this  brings  us  to  a  consideration  of  the  question 
immediately  before  us — the  administration  of  public 
library  funds.  Some  years  ago  a  discussion  of  this 
question  might  have  required  a  preliminary  apologetic 
justification  for  the  existence  of  such  an  institution  as  a 
public  library.  The  necessity  for  that  sort  of  thing  has 
happily  passed,  just  as  the  need  for  explanation  in  the 
reasonable  expenditure  of  public  funds  for  public 
schools  is  no  longer  existent.  Nevertheless,  the  general 
conception  of  the  possibilities  of  usefulness  in  public 
library  work  remains  imperfectly  developed.  It  will 
require  time  and  patient  effort  to  secure  full  recog- 
nition of  the  potent  possibilities  for  the  good  of  all  the 
people  that  may  be  realized  through  the  public  library 


ADMINISTRATION  OF  LIBRARY  FUNDS  75 

adequately  maintained  and  properly  administered. 
And  herein  lies  the  crux  of  the  question. 

That  anecdote  which  Souther  told  of  himself  will 
bear  repetition.  Meeting  an  old  woman  one  stormy 
day,  he  resorted  to  the  usual  topic  of  greeting: 

"Dreadful  weather,  isn't  it?"  he  remarked. 

This  was  quite  obvious,  of  course,  but  the  old 
woman's  rejoinder  was  rather  philosophical. 

"Any  weather  is  better  than  none,"  quoth  she. 

This  philosophic  way  of  viewing  a  discouraging 
condition  is,  I  fear,  but  too  true  with  reference  to  the 
average  public  library.  But  any  library  is  not  neces- 
sarily better  than  none.  The  average  municipality  is 
quite  likely  to  rest  satisfied  with  prevailing  conditions. 
If  municipalities  were,  like  other  business  corpora- 
tions, subjected  to  the  test  of  competition,  many  of 
them  would  be  in  the  hands  of  the  sheriff.  No  busi- 
ness man  can  survive  today  who  does  not  utilize  mod- 
ern progressive  methods.  The  successful  business  man 
today  is  he  who  adopts  the  principle  that  no  results 
can  be  secured  without  certain  outlays.  No  farmer 
would  conceive  it  prudent  to  economize  in  the  plant- 
ing of  his  seed.  If  he  did,  scanty  crops  would  con- 
vince him  of  the  error  of  his  methods.  And  yet  it  is 
this  error  which  many  cities  and  towns  commit.  They 
may  possess  libraries,  but  they  grudgingly  allow  them 
revenues  just  sufficient  to  keep  them  from  starvation. 
In  Wisconsin  we  have  a  goodly  percentage  of  public 
libraries  that  are  in  every  way  creditable,  but  it  is 
too  true  that  there  are  also  many  which  fail  to  realize 
their  full  possibilities. 

In  order  that  the  maximum  dividend  on  the  invest- 
ment may  be  realized,  it  is  essential  that  a  library's 
resources  should  permit: 

1.     The  employment  of  competent  trained  service. 


76  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

2.  The  purchase  of  books  and  magazines  at  fre- 
quent intervals  to  keep  the  library  from  going  to  seed. 

3.  Such  regulations  that  the  doors  of  the  institu- 
tion shall  be  open  at  least  as  often  and  as  long  every 
week  as  they  are  allowed  to  remain  closed. 

To  effect  these  desiderata,  the  library  boards  should 
be  given  sufficient  funds,  with  due  regard  to  economy 
of  administration.  It  is  coming  to  be  recognized  that 
a  librarian  is  expected  to  do  more  than  hand  out  books 
over  a  counter  and  take  them  in  again — that  the  up-to- 
date  librarian  must  study  the  social,  commercial  and 
intellectual  interests  of  the  community  so  as  to  make 
the  library  a  vital  force  by  providing  the  facilities  for 
expansion  of  these  interests.  The  public  schools  edu- 
cate the  average  person  during  an  average  period 
representing  five  years  of  his  life;  the  public  library 
should  afford  facilities  to  persons  of  every  age  and  in 
every  condition  of  life  for  continuing  one's  education 
indefinitely.  The  public  officer  desirous  of  ascertain- 
ing the  best  methods  for  paving  streets,  the  housewife 
in  search  of  receipts  for  the  most  wholesome  dishes 
for  her  table,  the  mechanic  seeking  to  better  his  con- 
dition by  studying  the  latest  improvements  in  his  craft, 
the  foreign-born  reader  anxious  for  literature  bearing 
on  the  duties  of  citizenship,  the  young  man  engaged 
in  serious  study  of  current  questions — these  and  every 
other  man,  woman  or  child  in  quest  of  information, 
should  have  the  facilities  offered  in  the  public  libraries 
to  secure  it  fully,  not  only  by  personal  search  along 
the  shelves,  but  through  the  ready,  helpful  and  sug- 
gestive assistance  of  a  librarian  trained  to  find  in  a 
multitude  of  print  the  essential  facts  which  are  wanted. 
Individual  cases  could  be  cited  by  the  score  to  demon- 
strate what  a  public  library  can  do  for  the  people  of  its 
community.  One  that  came  to  my  attention  recently 


ADMINISTRATION  OF  LIBRARY  FUNDS          77 

may  be  mentioned.     A  boy  who  gave  promise  of  no 
virtues  and  many  vices  engendered  by  idleness,  was  the 
despair  of  his  parents  and  the  annoyance  of  the  neigh- 
bors.   By  chance  he  wandered  into  the  reference  room 
of  the  library  in  his  town,  carelessly  picked  up  a  book 
dealing  with  inventions,  became  interested,  came  again, 
asked  for  and  received  more  books  on  the  same  topic 
and  studied  them  with  increasing  interest.     From  that 
day  be  became  a  changed  boy.     He  had  found  a  pur- 
pose in  life.     Today,  through  his  own  efforts,  he  is 
taking   the  engineering   course   in   a   college,   he   has 
secured  a  patent  from  the  government  for  a  valuable 
invention,  and  he  gives  promise  of  becoming  a  leader 
in  his  chosen  profession.    In  a  certain  city  of  this  state 
which  need  not  be  designated  by  name,  there  are  large 
manufacturing  interests.     There  is   a   public   library 
magnificently  housed,  but  until  lately  without  an  ap- 
propriation for  keeping  the  book  purchases  up-to-date. 
Workmen  were  eager  to  get  books  on  electricity,  on 
general  mechanics  and  useful  arts  effecting  their  daily 
labor,  but  there  were  no  funds  with  which  to  purchase 
them;  naturally,  they  soon  ceased  their  visits  to  the 
library.     When  the  Free  Library  Commission  called 
the   attention  of  the  heads   of  these  great  industrial 
enterprises  to  the  condition  of  affairs,  they  immediately 
saw  the  advantage  of  adequately  supporting  the  library. 
It  did  not  take  them  long  to  figure  out  that  no  cheaper 
method  could  be  devised  for  improving  the  product 
of  their  establishments  and  to  create  an  interest  among 
their  workmen  that  would  make  for  greater  industry, 
better  workmanship  and  consequently  increased  profits. 
On  their  part  the  workmen  were  quick  to  see  their  own 
advantage  in  increased  wages  in  proportion  to  increase 
in  skill  and  output.     As  an  economic  proposition  the 
net  result  is  greater  stability  in  the  industrial  life  of 


78  LIBRARY  IDEALS 

the  community — decreased  labor  troubles  and  increased 
confidence  between  employer  and  employed.  A  soci- 
ologist who  made  a  systematic  study  of  a  group  of  vil- 
lages largely  populated  by  workingmen,  reported  that 
the  one  which  showed  greatest  evidence  of  prosperity, 
cleanliness  and  attractiveness  of  homes  generally,  was 
one  conspicuous  by  reason  of  its  well-managed  public 
library. 

There  is  no  channel  of  human  usefulness  which 
appeals  so  forcefully  to  the  modern  spirit  of  philan- 
thropy as  the  public  library.  This  generosity  would, 
I  doubt  not,  be  greatly  multiplied  were  there  any  as- 
surance that  the  communities  to  be  benefited  would 
properly  maintain  the  institution  given  to  it.  Purely 
as  a  matter  of  business,  it  pays  to  support  a  library 
decently.  But  deeper  than  this  lies  the  motive  that 
should  actuate  any  city  or  town  to  erect  within  its 
midst  an  institution  that  must  stand  as  the  exponent 
of  its  intellectual  and  to  some  extent  its  social  life. 

"The  problem  before  us,"  said  Lowell  many  years 
ago,  "is  to  make  a  whole  of  many  discordant  parts,  our 
many  foreign  elements;  and  I  know  of  no  way  in 
which  this  can  better  be  done  than  by  providing  a 
common  system  of  education,  and  a  common  door  of 
access  to  the  best  books  by  which  that  education  may 
be  continued,  broadened  and  made  fruitful." 

These  words  are  as  true  today  as  when  they  were 
uttered. 


A     000  573  676    4 


SOUTHERN  BRANCH, 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 

LIBRARY, 

LOS  ANGE1.BS,  CALIF. 


